My Latest Wafer Iron Cleaning

[Tom Neitzel]

Picked up this wafer iron for a song.  Age?  I would assume 1870s-80s.  Maybe 1890s, but not earlier than the US Civil War in my opinion.  The design is what I consider to be a post or US Civil War patriotic design, I can pick out flags, brass horns, drums and kettle drums, a lyre or glockenspiel in the center and sheet music below.  Joel and I differed in our interpretation though (there's more discussion of this in the Wagner Wafer Iron article you can find in the PDF section).  Savery used this design on the 1872 wafer iron.

Kind of a mess to start with.  Rusty, bent and painted.  As is typical for the period, the plates are cast iron, most likely imported from England.  The handles made by a local blacksmith.  Plates are about 5 1/2 in diameter, about 3/16 inches thick.  Handles are wrought iron.  Overall length is 25 3/4 inches.

Tom

[Tom Neitzel]

First, the iron spent about a week in the lye to get rid of paint and gunk.  Wouldn't fit in my lye bucket, so I would do half, then flip over dunk the second half.  I don't have any part way done photos, but it did take off the pant and carbon (most of it).

Then 10 days in my molasses bath.   I've included a picture of my special molasses tank for wafer irons.  It is a 6 inch sewer pipe with a cap and extension on it.  Would work for lye too.  (and yes, that is not this wafer iron.)

These are the pictures after the molasses.  Just washed off the residue and buffed a little with steel wool.  No oil on yet, just a little flash rust here and there.  I don't know if you noticed, but the handles straightened out the longer I left it in the molasses. ;)

I was thinking of touching up the inside with the soda blaster, but there's not enough to worry about, so it is done after I get the mineral oil on it.

Tom

[Tom Neitzel]

That's about it for the cleaning story.  You can stop here if that's all you want to see, but I'm going to continue with more of the story about the construction of this iron that has become evident with it cleaned.

The handles are a lesson in how much work was involved just to make the handles.  You had a blacksmith, forge, hammer and anvil.

There is evidence of a blacksmith's weld on the handles.  That means he welded together more than one piece of iron to make the finished piece.  Just the forge and hammer with a bit of flux (possibly silica sand or borax).

The photos show the evidence of the weld.  Red arrows point to the lines on either side and the connection seam on the edge.

You see evidence of the shaping hammering, dents and dings, to the left of the welds.

[Tom Neitzel]

More interesting stuff at the hinge and plate attachment.  You can see where the smith cut the iron after the hinge to start shaping the attachment flat.  You see evidence of the shaping of the material.  As it gets toward the flat attachment, it looks like there may have been other layers of metal welded on.  Red arrows again point to the ragged cut material and possible welding seams.

At the other end, you can see where the flat iron was rolled and formed to create the rounded hand grip area and the clasp attachment (that is so round, I suspect it was shaped around a mandrel).

I really enjoy the stories these old pieces will tell you if you take the time to look closely and do a little research.

Speaking of stories, I hope you really don't think the molasses straightened the handles. ::)  I carefully did that using a padded vise. ;)

That iron you saw in front of the molasses tank is older than the one just described.  Likely from Belgium or Germany.  It's in the molasses right now.

[Mark R. Smith]

Very interesting and good work restoring it.

[Dwayne Henson]

Tom that is fascinating

[Jim Fuchs]

 Super as always Tom. Love seeing the details, and all the work/talent it took to make these pieces. Thanks for the detailed pictures. Good stuff! 

[Spurgeon Hendrick]

Amazing. Great job, Tom. I hope the wafer iron I'm working on will turn out that nice. (But I seriously doubt it will) Maybe I could just mail it up to you and let you clean it?! As payment, in the shipping box, I will include all the ingredients you need to make a batch of wafers. Please clean it, make a batch, consume batch, and then return it. Thank you.  ;)