[kymaz]

There are drying oils and non-drying oils. Drying oils are what you want to put on your cast iron pan to polymerize the oil into a coating. Tung oil would be a bad choice for chain lubricant because it will gum up, but castor oil should be more suitable for said chain.

[gorgoiler]

I was once an adherent (no pun intended) of this method, but nowadays I saturate my pans with sunflower oil instead.

After every use they get a soapy wipe out, rinse, then a one minute heat with a quarter inch of oil in the pan. The iron just soaks it right up so it’s all ready and greasy for the next fry.

Painting the pans with flaxseed oil leaves an uneven spidery brown pattern. If food sticks to the pan you have to sacrifice some of the coating. It wasn’t a durable solution for me.

[worik]

A quarter inch? That seems a lot.

Cast iron pans?

[gorgoiler]

Yup. Enough to flow over the base of the cast iron pan without any gaps.

When you heat the pan you can see the water bubble out of the iron pores. I let it cool, wipe it out, and hang it up.

[hedora]

I just use a few drops of canola oil, wipe it down, then heat it up enough for any water to start evaporating. By the time it cools, it’s dry. Unless I’m missing something, this uses ~ 1000x less oil. It also avoids build up of oil.

I’d expect your cast iron to become sticky / blistered over time, though I haven’t tried the oil you use.

[gorgoiler]

> 1000x

Impressive estimate!

My 25cm wide cast iron of mine just absorbed 0.185g of sunflower oil.

Apparently that's a layer 4 microns thick, or 1500x less than what the quarter inch I put in the pan:

  $ units '(1inch/4) / ((0.185g / (921kg/m^3)) / (pi*(25cm/2)^2))'
  Definition: 1551.7849