Old ladle

[sse]

Give ya some idea...The bowl is pretty large, over a cup capacity.

[Three Hawks]

That ladle is made of steel and will never "Season", just use it and keep it clean.  If it gets stuff stuck to it, any pumice based powdered cleanser will get it as clean as it will ever be. Try Comet or Dutch Cleanser.   The non scratching cleansers such as Bon Ami and Bartender's Friend will prove to be useless.  Get the gritty stuff that raises hell with counter tops and keep it for cleaning things that don't need a high shine.

Three Hawks

[sse]

Well, that's interesting.  As you can imagine, I thought it was iron.

[Three Hawks]

Unless you can date it to before 1900 it is almost certainly steel.  Pure wrought iron is very hard to come by any more and is horrificially expensive when it can be found.  I like to work wrought  iron as it works almost the same as copper.  Mild steel is much stronger, harder and 1/10 the cost.

The ladle appears to be machine made with perhaps two minutes of hand work in the hook on the handle end.  I wish I knew a quick test to differentiate between iron and steel.  Maybe one of the blacksmiths here can help.

I have some small pieces of wrought iron and they have some interesting properties.  Breaking an iron nail by bending it back and forth is nearly impossible, plain iron cuts as easily as annealed copper with a knife, shears or a chisel, and it can be torn along its grain structure with relative ease.  Steel will do none of these things.

The Iron bits I have are a couple of hand made wrought iron boat nails, and about a foot  of iron barrel hoop I found at an abandoned homestead in Eastern Washinton.  It was identified as iron because the buried portion was rusted off showing a pronounced, almost wood like grain structure.   I'd sure like to get my hands on more of it.   Barrel hoops made after about 1880 or so tend to be mild steel.  

Very old wagon, barn and  house door and window hardware have a good chance of being iron as well.  Cast and wrought iron have vastly different properties.  Neither will arc weld for crap, but wrought iron will nearly forge weld itself if asked politely.

Three Hawks

[Pitchy]

I`m no expert  but you check iron by the sparks it throws when grinding. Steel will have white sparks and wrought iron will be real tellow and a different looking spark. grind both and you wwill see the difference.