Pan from Alaska.

C

ChrisJ

New member
My wife found this in Alaska last week. No names no markings at all. Uneven thickness all around the edge and a wavy bottom. Looks possibly home/hand made. Any ideas?
 

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If it's a home made item, it's a pretty good one. That mark on the bottom isn't a gatemark but a void. Interesting, very interesting. Also no handles. Are you sure this was for cooking and not for something else?
 
Any evidence of it ever having handles? Sure looks like an early BSR fish fryer with the exception of no handles.
 
Large and shallow like that makes me speculate that perhaps it was used for boiling maple or birch sap.

Hopefully it wasn't used to boil off the mercury from a gold amalgam! :D
 
Chris, you might never know what it was, especially if it's home cast. It's what you use it for now that matters. Enjoy it and make up a story.
 
Don't sweat the mercury. The first time you heated it to season it, if there was any mercury (which I doubt), it would have evaporated into the atmosphere.
 
ChrisJ said:
Well ok, we may never know but it sure is cool. The mercury thing has me a touch concerned now!!
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I was only kidding about that. I seriously doubt they would use a pan like that to do it. If they could, they also would have wanted to condense the mercury fumes for reuse, and they sure couldn't do it with such a broad pan! Have no concerns about that.
 
If what I've read it true, they cut a potato in half and hung it over the evaporating mercury to catch the fumes so they could reuse it.
 
DSBradley said:
If what I've read it true, they cut a potato in half and hung it over the evaporating mercury to catch the fumes so they could reuse it.
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Yup. That was one way. The spongey nugget left inside was called a "punkin" and was used for money. The potato was mashed up in water to recover the mercury. I did a little amateur gold panning years ago.
 
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