Vinegar bath caused rust. What??

L

LizzyR

New member
Okay. I bought a pre-seasoned Lodge skillet from amazon a few weeks ago. The first thing I did was cook bacon in it. The bacon stuck in a couple of places, so I went at it with the rough side of a sponge and some water. Wiped it out, oiled it, put it on the stove for a minute. To make a long story short, the spots where the bacon stuck just kind of multiplied until seasoning was coming off in spots and I felt like my skillet was going backwards. Sooo I stripped the seasoning off in the oven, only to find rust on my skillet! I have no idea how that happened. If you have any ideas, please LMK!

THEN in an attempt to get the rust off before reseasoning, I poured a bottle of distilled white vinegar into the pan. The pan seriously rusted under the vinegar right before my eyes. I scrubbed a lot of it out with a ball of tinfoil but the rust was worse than before I put the vinegar in. The bottle said it was diluted in water to 5% acidity. Is that the vinegar I was supposed to use?? Or am I supposed to go find some pure undiluted vinegar somewhere?

After that mess, I used salt and a potato tonight and got most of the rust out, but my pan is still slightly orange pretty much all over. I'd really like to try to reseason it but I don't know if the rust will hurt it or not. I'm about ready to give up on this pan!

Any thoughts? Is the slightly rusty layer going to hurt the pan when I season it? Why did the vinegar make the pan more rusty? How did it probably get rusty in the first place?

THANK YOU!
 
Thanks! That is great info. I guess my main question is, since I used vinegar to try and get rid of the rust and ended up with even MORE rust, is it normal to see your CI turn red while it soaks in vinegar? I'm not talking about a flash rust after you take it out and rinse it off. I mean, rusting further from the vinegar. Or was the red color I saw not actually rust?
 
It was straight vinegar. It was regular distilled vinegar, diluted with water to 5% acidity (in the bottle). I just poured the whole thing in the skillet and it started to turn color right before my eyes!
 
I have used straight vinegar applied with a spray bottle to scrub residual black rust stains, and have never had spontaneous rusting such as it sounds like you're describing. There must be something else going on here we're not aware of. Photos would be a big help.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top