Customer Rating: 
Summary: hands down best skillet ever
Comment: Exceptionally good, heavy skillet, professional grade, been abusing it for over a year and its still going great
Customer Rating:
Summary: sand your pan
Comment: I also didn't like the rough finish on my pan and found that foods tended to stick, but its easy to simply sand it smooth with circular sandpaper in an electric drill. Most hardwares sell the adapter and sandpaper circles. You can use a course grit, then medium, then fine grit. Then season the pan. My pan is smooth as silk and scrambled eggs cook withou a trace left behind
Customer Rating:
Summary: great skillet
Comment: this is the best buy you can get. this cast iron skillet was very easy to seasoned and cooks great.i'm from louisiana and live in cajun country and the one thing we do best is cook. this pot is great for making gravy to go over your rice.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Get a Lid
Comment: Get a lid, or get a version of this that comes with a lid. I wouldn't want to cook anything frozen in this (or any other) pan without one. It's just so much easier to put frozen Italian sausage in over medium heat, a few tablespoons of water and plop the lid on for 20min than it is to keep the sides from burning as I wait for the middle to thaw, let alone cook. I'd give 5 stars if it did come with a lid.
My only other bit of info about cast iron in general is to let it get hot before using it, but not so hot as your thin coat of oil starts to pull away from the hot spots.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Most used pan in the kitchen
Comment: I like my 12" Lodge cast iron skillet so much that I just ordered a second one for my girlfriend. I've got a lot of Lodge cast iron cookware, but I swear if I had to pick just a couple of them to make do with, this large skillet would make the cut for top two most used items. (The other one would be the 5 qt Dutch oven.) While I think the 5qt Dutch oven suits most needs, most of the time, an important tip is that if you get the oversized 7 qt Dutch oven, the included lid fits the 12" skillet.
If you take advantage of Amazon's blowout clearance sales on both items (12" skillet and 7 qt. Dutch oven), in their original finish, (ie. unseasoned) configurations that means that it's possible to get about $125 worth (based on retail prices) of the finest cookware money can buy for between $40-$60 depending on which sales cycle event you manage to score. All that for the price of just needing to manually wash, coat them with veg oil and bake for an hour at 350*. I lucked out and got a 12" skillet under $10 and got the 7 qt Dutch oven just under $30. Keep your eyes on "Today's Deals" on Amazon, and be prepared to jump on bargains as Lodge shifts more towards the yuppie market and moves away from the old timely look and feel.
The 12" skillet will do anything that any of the smaller ones will do. I have almost all of them from the tiny (and nearly useless) 5" square "Wonder Skillet" through 6", 8", 10" and 12". I don't have, and don't want, any of the really bigger ones. The 10" and 12" are the most useful in everyday use. Only get a larger one if you really do cook for a scout troop. The ones larger than the 12" don't really fit on standard cookstove burners anyway and should be thought of as specialty gear. And the ones smaller than 8" should be thought of as novelty items that have limited use.
As others have mentioned, with just a little bit of care, these cast iron pots, pans, skillets, etc. will last a lifetime. If I could have just 5 kitchen pots, pans and skillets, 3 of them would be the Lodge 12" skillet, Lodge 10.5" round griddle and Lodge 5 qt Dutch oven with lid. (The 4th and 5th would be a modern, stainless steel 6 qt pressure cooker, and most any non-aluminum stockpot or pasta cooker in the 10-12 qt range, and, frankly, I could do without the last item if necessary.) That's pretty high praise for the utility of the 12" cast iron skillet.
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