Why and how did I get these pieces of seasoning? When I restore cast iron I use either a lye bath or electrolysis tank to remove rust, buildup, and the old seasoning. (And if soap really did remove the seasoning, I wouldn’t need these bad@ss tanks). I’m restoring this vintage square skillet for someone and so I dropped it inside my electrolysis tank to strip it down. Sometimes the buildup and old seasoning comes off but doesn’t fall off into the tank, allowing me to peel, or in this case, scrape, it off. It looks gross because some of it is gross buildup (but most of it is the seasoning), and it was soaking in the tank for awhile. When we season cast iron, the oil goes through the process of polymerization, where the carbon chains in fatty acids cross-link with each other and create a polymer network. The moral of the story is soap is safe for cast iron because soap can remove oil, but it cannot remove the polymerized layers that we refer to as seasoning. And no- it won’t ma...