My girlfriend bought a cafe and they had a cast iron waffle iron that had, in some places, 5mm of grime built up over 2 years, never once been cleaned. Even the hinges were full of old crusted on batter and grease.
I spent hours with a grill scraper scraping every individual pin.
I have gotten to or past the seasoning in many places except in between all of the pins is hell to try to scrape the old baked on grease away. I have tried sodium carbonate soaks, a wire brush and a wire brush on a drill, a few different scraping tools, and I have only gotten about half out of those grooves. Miles better than before, but still not perfect enough to season and put back in the cafe.
I did some research and it looks like lye does not break down polyethylene or polypropylene, and plastic wrap, at least Saran wrap, is made of polyethylene
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/lye-master-batching-advice-wanted.60822/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saran_(plastic)
Okay but that didn’t explain the purpose/benefit/result of wrapping it which i think is what I’m getting at
Oh, that’s probably to keep it wet to increase surface area from the wetting action of water and keep the chemicals in contact with the iron and not dry into crystals that are less effective at breaking down the grime buildup