Had a [del]senior[/del] stupid moment and put my very hot cast iron skillet on something plastic. So now there’s a big schmear of plastic on the skillet bottom and it cannot be scraped off.
I was thinking that the next time I do a fire in my burn pit, I’d toss the skillet in there and hopefully that will burn off the plastic? Would that work? Any other ideas?
Flip it over, put it back on the burner and heat it up just enough to melt the plastic so you can scrape it off.
The burn pit is what came to mind to me before even reading the entire thread. But then I thought “how many people have a fire/burn pit”? You and me I guess 
Thought about that, but there’s a fair amount of pitting on the bottom of the skillet and I fear I’d just smear the schmear over a wider area.
enipla, high five. 
Not many, I have a lot of trees and routinely gather up twigs and tree debris to burn. It’s legal in my township to have a small burn pit (mine is basically a tall metal ring, three feet wide) as long as it’s x many feet away from structures, trees and so on, and within a water hose-reach.
Back at-cha. Ours is your basic rock ring that you would see at camping sites. Well, it’s a big ring. About 4 feet. We burn a couple of times a year, just to get rid of deadfall.
We are VERY carful and also keep a hose handy. At the end of the day, I’ll pour 20-30 gallons of water on the fire. When done, I don’t even want to see steam.
We live in the forest. It’s all pine. When the house was built in the '80s, they just cut trees down and let them lay. We have been cleaning that up, along with new stuff every year. It’s just what you have to do.
Before trying the burn pit (because I hate the smell of burning plastic!) I might try heating a vessel of water large enough to dip the pan into, immersing the bottom of the pan in very hot water, and seeing whether that will loosen the plastic. The other advantage I see is that softening the plastic, instead of fully melting, might keep it in a semi-solid piece, rather than just smearing it around the bottom of the pan. If that didn’t work, I’d fire up the pit. (And yes, we have one, too. Nothing better than sitting around the fire with friends or family, having a drink and jawboning about whatever, roasting a marshmallow, etc. We also have lots of “leftovers” from the lot clearing, plus deadfall in the woods…)
I’d just put water in the pan and heat it enough to see if the plastic can be scraped off. It will still need some dry heating to burn off the last bits of plastic that get in the pores, and then re-seasoning, but getting most of the plastic out should be the first step.
Last time we bought cheap cast iron at a yard sale it had plastic and dead grease caking it. We took a kingsford matchlight bag of charcoal to a state park, found one of those ubiquitous BBQ grills next to a table, lit it off and plunked the skillet into the middle. Burnt everything off nicely [smelled nasty though.] Took it home, washed the hell out of it, and spent the weekend reseasoning it. It was one of the small 6 inch diameter ones. We figured that a kid melted a toy in it and nobody wanted to bother with it.
I don’t think hot water will soften any type of plastic that is “stuck”… if its stuck there , its get to be burnt away.
You probably want to burn it away before you put food anywhere near it…
You could use a picnic style gas burner ? Maybe heat the item up first and then apply flame.
OK so on Tuesday I have a tree service coming to trim and/or remove dead or about-to-fall trees. And this coming week is expected to be fairly non-rainy. So I imagine that by week’s end I’ll be firing up the burn pit and cooking my skillet. 