- Most people who cook steaks at home will tell you
the only way to get a good sear is with a cast iron pan.
But in the last couple of decades,
cast iron has reclaimed its throne
as the king of all cookware in America.
One of the fun parts about cast iron
is you can find an old rusty pan
and nurse it back to health,
or buy a new one made by hand by a boutique metalworker.
However, the most popular cast iron pans
are made by Lodge Cast Iron,
where the family-owned business
has been doing it since the 1800s.
They're available everywhere, they're ultra affordable,
and they do everything you'd want a pan to do.
So, today I'm in South Pittsburg, Tennessee,
at the Lodge Factory to see how their process
has evolved over time and how they create one of the most
consistent and widely-loved products in American history.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Dan Does.
The three components of a Lodge Cast Iron pan
are pig iron for heat retention,
steel for malleability,
and finally, scraps and reject pans
from all around the rest of the factory.
- The iron comes in and flows out to the pan.
These are called- (metal clunking)
- That's pretty loud.
Part of the fun.
- What's that? - Part of the fun.
- Yes, yes. - This is the rejects.
- Yeah. - At any point,
if someone doesn't like what they're working on,
or there's extra scraps, they send through here.
- If a pan doesn't pour right, it's immediately rejected
and thrown in.
And them if one of our employees
sees a defect on the pan anywhere
and doesn't like the look or feel of it,
they'll throw it back in for remelt
so that we don't waste anything.
- Oh! It's happening.
This guy must be so good at that claw game.
Everyone makes that joke.
- [Mike] So that hopper will move it into the furnaces
to be melted.
(pan clattering)
- [Daniel] So here, this is what's been filled
with all our raw material. - [Mike] Correct.
It gets shaken through that shoot
and dropped into this container that'll move it.
So that's how we get everything into the furnace itself.
- [Daniel] From here, the mix of metals is brought up to
2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and then it is slagged,
or has its impurities removed for the first of two times.
- And then all the impurities in the iron,
the rust that you saw, the sand and everything,
is floated to the top now.
So the robot is actually going in there and clamping it
and bring it out and pulling it out
so it doesn't go in the iron.
- [Daniel] From here, the molten metal is poured into
what is essentially a giant ladle,
which will be used to transport it
to the next stage of the process.
- All the sparks that you see flying,
we call yellow jackets.
They sting when they hit you.
So hence the protective clothing.
- I would have thought they hit more than sting.
- Yeah, they do.
Some of the old timers used to say,
if you licked your fingers, you could run your finger
through the molten metal.
(upbeat music)
- [Daniel] Now the ladle moves from the melting
to the molding section of the factory
where it is slagged again before it gets poured
into molds made of sand.
- We've seen the melting and now we're going to
pour into our mold.
So our molds have to be able to hold 2,500 degree
molten iron.
So you just can't use anything.
So we actually use sand.
Sand just like you would see on a beach somewhere.
But sand melts above 3,000 degrees, 3,100 to make glass.
Well, since we're pouring 2,500 degrees,
we don't hurt the sand
and we continually can reuse it over and over again.
- Part of the thing is you guys move through a lot of sand
that's constantly being molded and then remolded, right?
- Right. We're constantly remolding that sand.
We add certain amount of new sand
to replenish the amount that we lose on the castings
when we clean them.
- Right. I feel like people wouldn't know that
a huge component of the cast iron game is sand.
- Yeah. Just like the play at the beach.
We have a finer sand than traditional foundries run.
Our sand is made specifically for our castings.
- Let's get up there and check the sand then.
- Let's go.
So we've mixed all the sand up,
we've added the clay and the water
and we brought it and mixed it up
and now it's was coming and this belt then distributes it
to our two diesels.
So here's some sand.
So the sand, really, it's soft and fluffy.
You can hold it.
But when you squeeze it.
- Oh my god, yeah, like a really good snowball.
- So the sand comes in yellow,
just like you would see, but after we poured iron in it
and the clay levels burned up and things like that,
it turns black.
- So the way this works is these come down to stop the sand
from rolling through and send it down to one of the lines?
- It feed whichever lines calling for sand at that time.
- [Daniel] And if it doesn't go through either,
it just get sent back and back around?
- [Larry] Both systems are full,
the belt will stop and we won't send any sand down.
- The sand now falls down one of two chutes
before being formed into a mold
and then filled with the molten metal from before.
Okay, so we've seen the sand come down.
So this fancy machine is creating our sand molds?
- Yes.
- [Daniel] So how does this work?
- We've got a tool that's on this side of the machine
called the ram.
We've got a tool that's on this side of the machine
called the swing.
They face each other inside that chamber,
we blow this in and squeeze it.
We pull that pattern out of the way,
it's on a swing so it swings out of the way,
there's an impression on that side of the mold.
He pushes it all the way out, retracts the ram,
now that impression's on that side of the mold.
We make another mold.
The front of this mold now matches up
to the back of the other mold.
And we just continually do that.
That's one half, they match up.
You can see the gating going across.
Anything that's a void or a a shape in here
is the void in the mold
and that's where all the iron fills it up.
- So one mold does not get you a pan.
You need the mold and the previous mold,
or the mold and the next mold.
- Yes.
On this type of molding unit, yes.
So we're running 8SK, which has a logo on it right now,
which is our 10 and a quarter,
which has the deer logo on it.
- Is this hot?
- No. But it's hard.
Remember how soft that sand was I showed you?
Go ahead, push your finger in there.
It's very, very dense.
That's what allows Lodge Manufacturing
to make our castings the same everyday.
- Now it's time for the sand molds to be filled
with the molten metal mixture that we saw earlier.
So it's like no pan, pan.
- That's right.
And about 10 molds down from there, if we wanted to,
we could knock the sand out and that casting would be solid.
- [Daniel] Do you love this part?
- There isn't a part of the foundry I don't love.
I don't like inventory, how's that?
I don't like inventory. - You don't like inventory.
- If you think about what we're doing here,
we're taking these raw materials that were nothing
when they came into Lodge,
in a matter of a couple hours,
we're making a brand new product
that someone is going to take out of the box
and cook a meal in for their family that night.
(light jazzy music)
So this is where they dump, right here.
They dump off the line here, they go into the shaker fan,
they break up a little bit in there
and they go into the big DIDION drum.
So right now, all these castings that are coming up the line
our folks up here know what castings need to go through
which production line.
So they're up here separating the gating from the castings,
putting the proper castings on the cleaning machines,
and the other ones, they're sending down to the other
cleaning machines.
At Lodge, this is one of our more difficult roles
right here.
Not so much the physical part of it, but it's the heat.
- [Daniel] After workers pick through and place pans
on their respective cleaning lines,
any castings, scraps, or pans that haven't made the cut
for any reason are sent back through the factory
to the original scrap heap where they will be melted
and then used in the recipe for future products.
- These are motors that are spinning impellers
and we're shooting this shot.
- Oh, it's like a pellet gun.
- Yeah. So these are the dirty castings that were going in
to the cleaning machine
and you can see there's still quite a bit of sand on them.
This is how they come out.
- Is it still hot? - Yeah, they're warm.
- You know what they say about cast iron,
it hold the heat. - It does.
For a long time.
- [Daniel] And that's from the pelleting?
- [Larry] Yeah, that is from the blasting that we just did.
- The pans are now washed in an aggressive bath of soap,
water and steel beads before being sent off
to the seasoning part of the operation.
These feel pretty heavy.
They don't damage it?
- No. It actually does the little furnishing.
When you grind on the edge,
you create this that little bit of a sharp edge,
this'll take it off.
(light jazzy music)
- All right. So I can start to smell some oil.
- Yeah, we're right at the beginning
of our seasoning process now.
- So these pans are done, right?
You could sell this pan and it would just be unseasoned?
- Correct.
And before our seasoning process, that's how we sold them.
But we used to dip them in a wax.
And then the consumer had to go home, take the wax off,
coat it in oil, put if through their oven
and season it themselves.
So now we've applied the oil,
it's just a soybean oil,
and you can see that they're all sprayed evenly.
- [Daniel] So from here, they're getting heat up?
- Yeah, we're going to go up in this oven,
run them in there about 15 minutes
at a really high temperature.
So this is what I was talking about before,
about our spot seasoning, that drip.
And if you look close,
you can see the drips hanging right there.
Yeah, go on up.
- Oh, no way! - See the drip?
- Yes.
Just right here. Look over your empire.
What does ti feel like to look at everything
going on out here?
- You take a look at it, all these castings
that are coming down the line,
we're not making them for cars,
we're not making parts for who knows what,
we're making cookware for people to use.
That's what drives a lot of us here.
When you first come into work, you don't realize that.
But after you've been here a little while
and you understand what we feel every time we make a casting
and you think about the next person's going to touch this
is someone in their family
or some individual's going to take this
and make something with it.
- Is that enough poetry?
- Oh, I'm not done yet.
- So this is another pile of rejects here.
- So these are ones that our take-off line people inspect.
They're the final inspection before we put them in a box.
- Okay.
- So this casting is scrap.
We will not sell this as a first quality casting.
- [Daniel] I mean, I have no idea, but it seems like
at least 10% or 15% don't make it.
- You're close. It's a little less.
And that's overall.
This job, this eight skillet, we're probably,
I don't know, three to five.
But then we have some other ones that are a lot higher.
But we average out at less than 10.
You want to label something?
- [Daniel] I'll label something.
- [Larry] Oh man, you ain't trained!
- I'm making his life more difficult right now.
- No you're not. No you're not.
- Can I put one more on here?
- Nope. Nope. - Three?
Three to a side.
- It's tough.
- I can dance.
- I'm amazed every single day.
Now he has a little advantage over you
because he's looking ahead.
So he's inspecting the backside
as they're coming down the line.
If you watch him, he's looking.
- I don't have his wherewithal yet.
I think I'm losing my cool here already.
Okay. Push them down? - Yes.
- I feel like you have to have nine arms.
- [Larry] Should we bring him on board?
We going to bring him on board?
- [Woman] Yeah!
- (beep) Sorry, Larry.
Each aspect of the job is actually like
its own level of hard.
All right. So we've loaded up the pallets
and then now we're going to send them
to the monster distribution center?
- [Larry] Yeah. We have a distribution center
just off site here where we do direct to consumer,
we pick an order specifically for customers,
or sometimes they're full pallets
and they just load them there for us.
This is our distribution center.
Everything that we make in the factory comes here.
- This is insanely huge.
- It's 212,000 square foot.
22 docs.
- [Daniel] It must feel kind of special seeing this
monster NFL stadium sized warehouse coming from
what you guys do over at the other shop.
- Yeah. I'm just trying to think of all the people
that were here before us that are here now.
I think you and I spoke a little bit about that.
Their contribution to get Lodge to where it is right now
is amazing when you think about it.
Everybody who's been here over the years,
you saw the pictures in there, those 25 year club people.
Some of them are 30, 35 years they've been here.
And all of this is because of everything they've did
through their careers.
And to sit here and look at this,
what we ship out daily, what we ship out weekly, monthly
to our customers, to our fans.
If you think about all the people,
all those molding.
Back in the day, we did it by hand.
That's what is amazing to me.
And all their efforts got us to here where we're at now.
It's crazy.
I walk through here and I look at all these aisles
and how many people have touched those castings
is pretty cool.
- Well, thank you so much for having us here today.
- Man, I enjoyed every minute of it.
I wish we had more people come through
to really understand and appreciate
what it takes to make a skillet
and then make a meal in that same skillet.
It's cool.
- Be careful what you ask for.
If enough people see this video,
you're going to have a tour everyday.
- Well, I don't know about everyday.
(light upbeat music)