Mrs. Toolsteel V2.0 and I use cast iron. Many of them we got when my "Late Great" Grandmother passed away (if she were on this site I suspect her screen name would be "Wrought Iron" or maybe "work hardened"
) Hers were mostly Griswold
The rest of them we have picked up at garage sales and auctions for $3-$5. Best score was a cast Iron Dutch oven for $5 at a garage sale. Seasoning them is pretty easy. Best part is it seemed like whatever we bought other than cast iron needed to be replaced every 3 years or so....not with cast iron.....and V2.0 says her swing has improved with them as well......
Side note.....when Granny (she loved us calling her Granny) found out I was going to school for machining / manufacturing she was SO EXCITED....I was pretty proud of her approving of my choice of careers...A couple of months into school I found out why Granny was excited....she slyly asked me if I could build her a still similar to the one she remembered her father using....amazing what some of us will do for an old woman...especially if she sweetens the deal with 3 bottles of dandelion wine
and a copy of her recipe
ROFL! WBGVA G'mum was as strict as anti-drink ever got! English G'Mum in Pittsburgh would send Uncle out for "some of that very nice grape juice!" they only stocked at the liquor store for some odd reason? "Martell Cordon Bleu" I think it was? Cudda fooled me. Didn't taste like Welch's at ALL! I'd have figured any grape it had ever gotten near was badly mauled by an incompetent taxidermist.
Meanwhile, back in Appalachia ..
5,000 cider-apple trees no longer worth the hired-help to pick, press, and jug as the depression wore on then continued into a manpower-short World War?
G'Dad's "Home-made Blackberry Wine" became as famous as it was in constant demand.
Mind a VERY FEW gallons of it had to colour-up one HELL of a lot of pale-purple-fiery and knock-you-d'rectly on your
ass... West Virginia Moon.... as earned more off the apples than cider ever had!
"WHITE" lightning was for the uneducated who only followed strong drink. Surely not for the discerning who were ever-so-much more genteel and cultured?
So long as your ass didn't BOUNCE when that purplish rocket-fuel had its way!
Was a tad "over the top", ration-size-wise ... to serve it out in pint Mason Jars!
By the time I got to breathing reg'lar enough to ask the grown-ups why a kid wasn't allowed as much as they were?
Couldn't get a damned ONE of 'em to pay a lick of attention to the question!
Dangerous Lead-soldered old car radiator?
Oh, Hell no!
Solid copper and proper flare fittings!
He weren't the B&O Railroad's Roundhouse Foreman by no accident of ignorance about how
steam was meant to function!