Blue Steel Pan Rusting
ivan
Jerry Avins
I think the rust will come off readily with fine steel wool and soap,
but the color is gone. Restoring the color is too much trouble (I
think). Keep it from rusting in the future with a light coat of cooking
oil. Flaxseed (raw linseed) oil is especially good, and corn and canola
oil fine. What is described at http://users.erols.com/jyavins/season.htm
for cast iron.
I don't know the pan, but $51 seems like a lot of money for it to me
too.
Jerry
--
"The rights of the best of men are secured only as the
rights of the vilest and most abhorrent are protected."
-Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, around when I was born.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, 1759
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Grandma
"Jerry Avins" <j...@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:3D39F059...@ieee.org...
> > ivan wrote:
> >
> > I ordered a Pull Man pan from cooking.com. The pan is made of blue
> > steel, I have used it only once after baking, I washed it with warm
> > soapy water (as recomended). This was about a week ago...today I took
> > it out of the pantry and found the pan full of rust! Does anyone knows
> > if this is normal? The pan didn't come with any kind of instrucitons
> > to treat it before or after using
> >
> > Ivan
> >
> > with shiping I paid $51 I think is quite an expensive pan to rust in
> > less than a week!
> >
> >
>
> I think the rust will come off readily with fine steel wool and soap,
> but the color is gone. Restoring the color is too much trouble (I
> think). Keep it from rusting in the future with a light coat of cooking
> oil. Flaxseed (raw linseed) oil is especially good, and corn and canola
> oil fine. What is described at http://users.erols.com/jyavins/season.htm
> for cast iron.
>
> I don't know the pan, but $51 seems like a lot of money for it to me
> too.
Me too - a WHOLE lot. Jerry I'm sure that you would know more about this
than I do, but I am for some reason under the impression that *real* blue
steel is also known as Damascus steel of the legendary swords of Crusader
times and that the secrets to making real blue steel are long since gone.
Isn't modern "blue" steel just ordinary steel with a blue coating?
Ivan
apologize and credited my account...they took care of all shiping expenses.
I order another pan from http://fantes.com/loaf_pans.htm
This pan was $30 + $6 shiping, and it is made of Heavy gauge aluminum...
Ivan
Grandma
"Ivan" <Please do not respond privately> wrote in message
news:ahcup...@enews4.newsguy.com...
Good for you! You'll probably be much happier with aluminum. That and cast
iron are the only things I'll give house room to.
Jerry Avins
Damascus steel isn't usually blue. It appears to have a grain, like wood
and some wrought iron. (Take a close look at an old anchor raised from
the harbor floor and now used as an ornament.) Damascus steel's grain
comes from the process of hammering and folding that gives it its famous
toughness. Some modern steels are both harder and tougher -- which means
that they make better cutlery -- but uniform and drab by comparison. Old
Damascus blades are hand-wrought collectors items. Newly made ones are
often made largely by machines, but like wood, each is different. They
are, in effect, newly made antiques.
I make antiques too. Not to deceive, but to use. To replace parts of the
blue iron thumb latch the from the front door in my country house, I
first shaped the parts and removed unwanted tool marks, then blued them.
The dark blue color is a thin film ferrous oxide suffused with oil.
The two common oxides of iron that interest us here are ferrous, FeO,
which is black in bulk, and ferric, Fe2O3, which is, well, rust colored.
Hot iron oxidizes to ferric oxide. In the presence of water, ferrous
oxide takes on more oxygen and becomes ferric: rust.
To blue my latch parts, I heated them in air. The color sequence is
described as light straw, dark straw, blue. When they were hot enough
long enough to take on a good color, I quenched them in light oil, wiped
them down, then heated them again to burn off the surface oil and char
what was in the pores of the oxide, sealing it against moisture. They
have been on the front door at the lake house over 20 years now, without
paint, and unrusted. The black finish on wrought iron has a similar
origin. That finish is tough. If you ever removed the black from an
overheated stainless steel pot, you know how tough.
Some tool steels blacken without heat. I lost a pair of diagonal cutters
on the windowsill of my workplace one fall. It rusted there over the
winter, and it was covered with rust when I noticed it in the spring.
(The joint was free because it had been oiled.) To reclaim it, I soaked
it in light oil before trying to remove the rust. The rust came off
easily with fine steel wool, revealing a beautiful black finish
underneath. It hadn't been in the weather long enough to get pitted.
I've since tried the technique with other tools (heat would ruin the
temper) with mixed success.
I hope you're not sorry to have gotten me started.
Jerry
--
"The rights of the best of men are secured only as the
rights of the vilest and most abhorrent are protected."
-Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, around when I was born.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, 1759
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Grandma wrote:
>
> "Jerry Avins" <j...@ieee.org> wrote
...
Jerry Avins
Well, that's over. Good luck with your new pan.
While oven cleaner can be used on iron pans to remove baked-on fat, it
will etch aluminum. Paint remover works well, though, and there are some
that aren't hazardous to breathe indoors. I have a lot of aluminum oven
ware, and it stays clean easily if I'm careful not to reheat grunge.
Steve H
crystal structure than ordinary brown rust. Used especially for finishing
firearms.
"Grandma" <gra...@nospam.interdial.net> wrote in message
news:ujju1hp...@corp.supernews.com...
Jerry Avins
>
> The "blue" is actually a form of iron oxide, yep rust, that has a much finer
> crystal structure than ordinary brown rust. Used especially for finishing
> firearms.
>
while rust (also rouge) is ferric oxide. The ferrous oxide holds oil
well, and when oiled, prevents rust. Old stationary steam engines had
their cylinder lagging covered with blued sheet called Russian iron.
Although Russian iron rusts easily when damp, only a little oil, such as
is common around machinery protects it very well.
Jerry
--
"The rights of the best of men are secured only as the
rights of the vilest and most abhorrent are protected."
- Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, 1927
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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