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(Very new to thrifting) Bought a smooth 80s cast iron pan and noticed some silver specks only after getting home.
(sh.itjust.works)
I’m guessing the finish chipped from the store cleaning the pan aggressively, but poorly, given the recent sticker date. Is that unusual? Gonna refinish it myself this week, as long as this isn’t setting off anyone’s alarm bells.
Edit: gonna head to the hardware store for a lead test kit and magnets this weekend, unless someone can think of a better process. Thanks for the advice, all!
Certainly worth testing for lead, but know that most tests you can probably get your hands on are prone to false-positives
And realistically, the risk is pretty minimal. Yes, cast iron is a good choice for melting lead because it can stand up to the heat, but think about it for a second, would a big skillet be a good choice for that? If you're going to be pouring directly from the skillet that's a pretty awkward operation, lead is heavy, the skillet is heavy, and those pour spouts are kind of hit-or-miss when you're pouring something less dangerous than molten metal, and if you're going to be ladling the lead out it's a bit shallow for that operation.
And unless you're melting a lot of lead at one go, that big heavy pan has a lot of mass to heat up before you get to melting temp, it's gonna take you a long time.
It certainly wouldn't be my first choice for a lead-melting vessel is what I'm getting at. Not that no one has used them for that purpose, I'm absolutely sure plenty of people have, but I'd probably be looking for something a little smaller and/or deeper for that purpose if I had any choice in the matter.
Yeah ... but sometimes people just use what they've got.
This certainly isn't an ideal container ... but it's also not entirely terrible, either. It can handle the heat without baking off impurities, and it does at least have those side pour spouts, which makes it better than a lot of containers that don't have spouts at all.
I wouldn't rule it out just because this pan isn't the ideal lead-melting container.
They could just eat some bullets to remove any doubt. Then at least they'd know.
edit: I just remembered that "eat some bullets" is oft used as a metaphor for something I very much did not mean to reference. I was trying to be funny, not sad, and certainly don't mean to encourage anything. That's totally on me.
If the original implication refers to something you're considering, there are resources. The world is better with you in it.
Out of curiosity are they prone to false negatives do you know?
I have a data point of size ~5, when a friend purchased a bona fide lump of lead in order to be the control for his lead test strips. And he basically used the test strips in pairs: one on the object in question (eg cast iron pan, ham radio, etc) and then the other against that lump of lead. There have not been any false-negatives from the lump.
Unfortunately that's a bit outside of my area of expertise, I never really see false negatives being discussed when this comes up, I'm sure they happen, not many tests are 100% foolproof either way.
Most lead tests are really designed for paint, so using them on a pan is kind of outside of what they're made for to begin with and I'd be a little skeptical of the results either way.
My understanding, and it may be wrong, my knowledge on the tests comes mostly from places like this where people are cast iron geeks more than chemists, are that the tests are almost more of a test for the presence of metal in general not so much specifically lead, so you get a lot more false positives because of course there's more metal in a metal pan than you'd expect there to be in any kind of paint, and it's better to err on the side of caution and give a false positive instead of a false negative.
Again, that's secondhand knowledge from people who I don't have a ton of confidence in having their facts straight to begin with, so take that with a huge grain of salt.
Thanks!