What you need to know before purchasing this

I enjoy using cast iron for a lot of my cooking and grilling. I have quite a few pieces from old companies such as Griswold to new stuff from Lodge. So I wanted a baking pan in cast iron as well. But Lodge doesn't make one and from my searching very few do. So I pulled the trigger on this. First impressions were " hmm,. not bad"-- BUT-- This item is NOT the quality of a Lodge or Griswold- casting is rough, unfinished, extremely dirty and totally unacceptable to use out of the box. The "seasoned" baking pan I received had so much questionable black gunk on it, I took some coarse emery paper to the whole inside of the pan. I spent a good hour hand sanding down to bare metal and was shocked at how much black unknown material came off ( about a 3rd of a cup). After seasoning it was safe to use. If you do purchase this be prepared- old clothes and rubber gloves. You will end up with this all over you when sanding- better yet I should have taken this over to my buddies house and just sandblasted it clean. It is NOT ready to use out of the box. In hindsight is it worth it ? Depends on how much work you want to put into it - plus the original cost. Only you can decide. I would have given it more stars if it was ready to use and finished better.

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