I decided that a wood burning stove with hot coals should work just as well as a self cleaning oven. Some pics of the pan cooking for 2 hrs on the coals and the loose rust debris afterwards. Worked actually very well. Now the real work begins.
To each their own, but personally I'd never clean a pan this way. There's this pretty common misconception that cast iron is indestructible when really, especially the older thinner pans, is just not true. It becomes brittle and can crack pretty easily with great temperature changes. They also warp easily from over heating which is why a lot of them have a wobble on a flat surface. I'd highly recommend looking at the other cast iron thread in this section that's almost 90 pages long now. Endless info.
Thanks woody5506, I was careful and warmed the pan up before i sat it on the coals. Most people use an oven for that but i don't have an oven right now. I also set it on a low coal bed and kept an eye on it. It turned out fine no cracks or warps or wobbles. all the sticky crud turned to dust and left the loose rust. Otherwise i would have had to sand that off.
