Mystang's Homesteading Circus

[farmerjan]

Impressive that it cleaned up that good. Congrats on the find and the restoring job!!!!!

 

[thistlebloom]

I'm shocked at how nice it is! I guess it must have been pretty well seasoned to come back to life that well. Does it have any makers marks on it?

 

[mystang89]

I'm shocked at how nice it is! I guess it must have been pretty well seasoned to come back to life that well. Does it have any makers marks on it?

8G1 is the only thing written on it. It's quite nice. The sides are about 1 inch deeper than the normal cast iron skillet you find which is good for a large size family with larger portions of food to make.

 

[Duckfarmerpa1]

We use a mill to to our own boards it’s great!! We can buy lumber from the Amish...although, I like the rough cut...but then we mill it...gives us tons of shavings...I mean..a TON! In fact...our chickens found on large screen TV box full..they started laying eggs in there! Must be cozy!! But those shavings I use all the time in the coop, etc. in fact we’re going to mill some crappy boards just get shavings when I’m out!! Wear a mask and sunglasses and ear plugs...plus, you’ll need to use an air compressor to hose yourself off because your a mess after..at least I am..I’m at the receiving end!

 

[mystang89]

You're definitely spot on about those shavings! We've only milled one log so far and already filled up a 50 gal garbage can! First place the shavings went? Chickens lol.

I was going to till some more of the garden today but that might have to wait till this evening or tomorrow when it's had a bit of time to dry. T-storm just rolled through which is good because I just closed of the rain barrels so they will start collecting rain.

I saw a YouTube video about a "no dig"garden. Looked interesting. I think I'll look into it a bit more. Anyone else have any experience with large gardens and this method?

 

[thistlebloom]

@Beekissed does.

 

[Bruce]

I use one similar to this one.

I've seen those, do you have a ripping chain for your saw? I have found that the regular chain crosscuts great but is almost a butter knife if I try to go with the grain.

8G1 is the only thing written on it.

Can you get a picture of the bottom where those marks are? The 8 is probably and indication that it is an 8" pan. "G" maybe means Griswold? If you are lucky it is pre 1950's, the "grain" is a lot smaller and smoother on old cast iron.

 

[mystang89]

This is the mill, I think it's an "Alaskan mill" or variety of it.

The bar on the chainsaw is 24". The chain is a milling chain sharpened to 10° however I think that I'll get a skip chain and sharpen it to 10° since that should help with the speed at which the mill goes through the wood.

I also need to get a 16" chain, fuel cap and oil cap for my other Stihl for the small cuts.

My son and I are out trying to clear and split the wood. He's operating the splitter and I'm trying to cut the pieces to size. Hopefully the girls will be out to help load and we'll get a chunk of the pile finished.

EDIT.
@Bruce the pan is very smooth, much smoother than any other cast iron I have, and I have about 5.

 

[Bruce]

I couldn't find anything specific about the 8 G 1 but I watched this video

And was reminded that while the 8 is likely a size indicator, it is the size of the "eye" of a wood cookstove, not the pan in inches. Since your pan has no ring, it is likely post wood cookstove era (the ring was kept by many manufacturers though the 2 year old Lodge pan I have has a groove not a ring). What is certain is that your pan was made before 1960 as ALL pans from any country of origin since then must have that country on the bottom of the pan. There is info in the video about how you can tell if a "name brand" manufacturer made a "no name" pan and one of those ways is by the shape of the handle or what the juncture between the handle and pan looks like.

Of course none of this is particularly important, just interesting

 

[mystang89]

I couldn't find anything specific about the 8 G 1 but I watched this video

And was reminded that while the 8 is likely a size indicator, it is the size of the "eye" of a wood cookstove, not the pan in inches. Since your pan has no ring, it is likely post wood cookstove era (the ring was kept by many manufacturers though the 2 year old Lodge pan I have has a groove not a ring). What is certain is that your pan was made before 1960 as ALL pans from any country of origin since then must have that country on the bottom of the pan. There is info in the video about how you can tell if a "name brand" manufacturer made a "no name" pan and one of those ways is by the shape of the handle or what the juncture between the handle and pan looks like.

Of course none of this is particularly important, just interesting

Thanks! May not be important but I've always enjoyed knowing the story behind old things. I think if we listened more to those stories we could learn a lot.

The children and I split a bit of wood today. The oldest was really helpful handling the splitter while I sawed a few pieces to size. This is what we started with.

That saw mark is 24"long if that gives you any idea of how wide that log was. The next picture is after.

And this is after stacking. The children were a conveyor belt which sped things up tremendously. The side next to the wall is where we stacked the wood. It was completely empty when we started. The other stack was already there.

So far that's about 20ft x 8 feet tall.