Bakersfield Cast Iron

11/06/2025

Just finished restoring this for my friend Zhanique.
Wow it's beautiful.

I did the handles differently this time. Instead of using electrolysis and several Dremel bits to do the springs, this time I threw them straight into a brass tumbler as soon as they came out of the Etank. That kind of worked. They weren't polished looking when I was done, but they were clean. I did just a little bit of polishing with my dremel, but generally speaking I left them in the not-mirror-shiny state because I knew that would take better seasoning. And as you can see from the picture, I am going to deliver with seasoned handles this time.

Super cool.

08/14/2024

Hey team cast iron. Just a quick note that I moved from Brooklyn NY to Bakersfield CA. I reset the name of this page. I'm not likely to do a lot of restoring, probably no more sales, but I'm always happy to chat about iron. Hit me up!

tf

04/27/2024

Woo hoo!! Look what I got in the mail today!!

04/13/2024

So yeah I have a collection to keep up with. The weather’s nice. Let’s open the windows and doors and start adding coats! Gotta keep everything good and oily!

I’ve done about 60 pieces already. My air filter has been yelling at me for four days!

03/29/2024

Look what we got in the mail today!!!! I’ve been waiting so long to get my hands on one of these.

03/26/2024

12/28/2023

Another old Griswold restore for a client. It's great to restore for others, they come over, we chat cast iron, share a cup of coffee, it's fun.

12/21/2023

Before and after restore for a client! Maybe I'll just do before and afters from now on. ;)

09/13/2022

𝙎𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙡𝙚 𝙞𝙧𝙤𝙣!

I’ve been using my waffle iron for a couple of years now. I oil heavily when I cook with it, and over time that brought about a lot of black carbon buildup in the teeth. I forgot to take a picture when I started cleaning, but man it was getting crusty. My waffles haven’t been as pretty as they used to be, so I figured they were cooking slightly unevenly due to the carbon buildup. It was time to clean them, but just the teeth! The handles, the back of the iron, the base, all fine, it was just the teeth that I need to remove carbon from.

The general cycle for stripping off carbon buildup off is, spray it with easy off, let it soak/dry, then rinse off and scrub, and repeat. That’s what I did to the teeth side of the paddles. It took a full can of easy off, maybe six applications, but eventually it got all cleaned off and back down to bare metal. It took about a week or so.

After that, I put three coats of my own seasoning blend back onto it, and it was back to perfect!

Who wants waffles now!

Enjoy the pics of the process, sorry I forgot to take a picture of the initial crusty state!

09/06/2022

Really proud of this monster grocery tote I made over the past few days. It's denim so that's a first. All of the construction is pretty bombproof but there's a lot of decorative seams to make the bag look good and hold shape. I also embroidered the BCI logo in it.

My cast iron side hustle has been slowly forking into industrial sewing.