Posted 11 years ago
jonima
(113 items)
I have a blast restoring old, cast iron cookware into usable pieces again. This is my latest piece as well as my most challenging so far. I got the grill from an ad I placed on a local For Sale/Wanted to Buy page on Facebook. I actually requested a rusty one so that I could restore it. It didn't take long to get an email from a guy that said he had one. I went to pick it up and was a little disappointed that it was missing the two doors for the front of it, but everything else was there, and nothing was cracked, so I got it. I figured I'd never find a set of Birmingham doors for the front of it, but was quite happily surprised when I found a set on eBay after some creative searching. I took it all apart and was again nicely surprised when I was able to get the nuts off of the two bolts. They were so rusted together that they looked like one piece, but they broke loose without breaking the bolts or stripping the threads. Each piece went into my electrolysis tank to get all of the rust off. I didn't want to use paint on it, so I seasoned each and every piece using canola oil. It gave it a nice, black, shiny surface. I was able to order a replacement bail handle directly from Lodge since Lodge still produces a grill much like this, just a little different design. Lodge bought out Birmingham Stove & Range back in the day. So now I have a completely usable grill that had previously sat outside for years, no being used. Can't wait to fire it up. It's hard to track down exact dates for these pieces. BS&R started producing them back in the 1930s and continued making them up until Lodge bought them out.
Thanks, nutsabotas6, and thanks for the love nuts and agh.
Wow, very nice!