What is this reddish colored scale?

[Phil R.]

Like the title says, what is it? Any idea how to remove it without damaging the skillet.

 

[John E]

It's hard to determine from the photo, but often a red scale appearance is indicative of fire damage. Unfortunately there's not much that can be done to help it if that's the case.

 

[Doug D.]

Would need to see it photographed outside in good daylight without glare or camera/artificial light color shift to be sure. This pic doesn't say fire damage to me, just seasoning applied to heavily and congealed.

 

[Phil R.]

Hope this picture better represents what I'm dealing with. I have done the self cleaning oven to try to take it off. It didn't touch it. It feels like a coating that is chipped and pitted.

 

[Doug D.]

It does look pitted on the bottom. Still hard to tell about the color as it is mostly in shadow. The bottom would probably better confirm fire damage or not.

 

[Phil R.]

Sorry about that. Hope this one helps.

 

[Doug D.]

Although I can't say for certain, I'm going to go with probably fire damage. Usually, the rosy color is dusty, and there also tends to be a white haze as well. But that's usually pans that came out of the fire and had nothing further done to them. Was the black residue on the bottom like that or worse before your SCO treatment?

 

[Phil R.]

It was a little more rough. After baking, the black part is smooth.

 

[Doug D.]

I meant was there more black crud covering the bottom than those patches.

 

[JaredS]

Have you used your SCO to clean iron before? It looks like there is still seasoning on it to me, which may mean your oven isn't getting hot enough to take it off. I'd throw it in an e-tank, myself.

 

[Phil R.]

Thanks for the help guys. The black coloring did cover a larger area before the sco. I will try e-tank. Thanks again, you guys are great.

 

[Phil R.]

I did sco another skillet at the same time as this. It turned out beautiful.

 

[J.Ottinger]

It seems to me that on several that I did a SOC on turned this color too. I think it's rust. I dd an experiment on an old small label Griswald that was rusted so bad I think it's just a wall hangar now. I used some rust disolver that I picked up from the Auto parts store. It did get rid of the rust, I just got done seasoning it last night so I haven't checked it out completely, but it was looking really good last night.