As long as you get loose stuff off and coat it, it really doesn’t matter much. It gets better over time. Don’t worry about getting it black like new, thats mostly soot and doesn’t add anything. Mine stay shiny iron forever.
Sometimes I even let it spot rust before the first coat and it gets a cool rusty colour sheen. Similar sheen using unrefined rape seed oil. But really any food oil, even olive oil, works great. Google the smoke point temperature of your oil, or just watch for it to puddle and just barely start smoking.
Good luck!











Looking nice!! If you keep cleaning it with one of those steely things those pits will eventually fill up with polymerised oil and get smoother. I used a piece of hardened tool steel and actually scraped the cooking surface almost mirror smooth. Cooks like a dream.
And avoid sour stuff like tomatoes as it does the same as vinegar but I find that a hot pan with oil survives even that, so long as you get it out of the pan as soon as you’re done. Then again, as you’re now know, fixing it is dirt simple.