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Yes, many people have great success with flax seed oil. However, many experience flaking from either improper seasoning, poor quality oil, or simply using too m

Yes, many people have great success with flax seed oil. However, many experience flaking from either improper seasoning, poor quality oil, or simply using too much. I stick to vegetable oils and shortenings because it's what my grandparents and their parents used. I find that it works well, is cheap ($3/16oz vs $12/8oz), and readily available. I choose crisco because of its shelf life and high smoke point. Seasoning cast iron with crisco is the same process as flax seed oil, but you don't have to repeat the process as many times and it is forgiving if you use too much. You still should use very little oil and season the pan upside down so any excess oil doesn't pool on the surface. Finally, I don't care to keep or use lye.

denton-scratch 5y ago
"Lye" is the same as caustic soda? I saw the word used several times up-thread. In my lexicon, lye is made from wood-ash; the stuff I'm referring to comes as white pellets, and it's nasty stuff indeed - rubber gloves and goggles. I keep it because my drains tend to get blocked, and caustic works better than supermarket drain-cleaner. I also keep a bottle of "Spirits of Salts", which is 30% HCl in water. It's better at removing scale than supermarket toilet cleaners. I imagine a vigorous reaction would occur if I were ever to mix these two sustances. Frankly, I don't like paying a premium for a proprietary product, when these simple chemicals just work better and go further.
- adrian_b 5y ago
  "Lye" is now frequently used for any kind of strong alkali. Nowadays caustic soda is much cheaper than caustic potash, so "lye" is applied more frequently to caustic soda. The original sense of the word "lye" was referring, as you said, to the lye obtained from wood ash (or other vegetable ash), whose main component was caustic potash. Caustic soda, having similar properties, was obtained from soda (sodium carbonate) extracted from evaporite mineral deposits. Before the end of the 18th century, when the names of potash and soda (formerly just commercial names) were adopted in the chemical language, for many centuries the scientific names for lye (caustic potash) and caustic soda were vegetable alkali and mineral alkali, because of their different preparation methods.

denton-scratch 5y ago

"Lye" is the same as caustic soda? I saw the word used several times up-thread. In my lexicon, lye is made from wood-ash; the stuff I'm referring to comes as white pellets, and it's nasty stuff indeed - rubber gloves and goggles. I keep it because my drains tend to get blocked, and caustic works better than supermarket drain-cleaner. I also keep a bottle of "Spirits of Salts", which is 30% HCl in water. It's better at removing scale than supermarket toilet cleaners. I imagine a vigorous reaction would occur if I were ever to mix these two sustances. Frankly, I don't like paying a premium for a proprietary product, when these simple chemicals just work better and go further.

adrian_b 5y ago
"Lye" is now frequently used for any kind of strong alkali. Nowadays caustic soda is much cheaper than caustic potash, so "lye" is applied more frequently to caustic soda. The original sense of the word "lye" was referring, as you said, to the lye obtained from wood ash (or other vegetable ash), whose main component was caustic potash. Caustic soda, having similar properties, was obtained from soda (sodium carbonate) extracted from evaporite mineral deposits. Before the end of the 18th century, when the names of potash and soda (formerly just commercial names) were adopted in the chemical language, for many centuries the scientific names for lye (caustic potash) and caustic soda were vegetable alkali and mineral alkali, because of their different preparation methods.