I have been lucky to find several old Griswold and Wagner cast iron skillets and assorted cookware at garage sales and have developed a system to recondition them. They are very different than the more modern Lodge skillets. They are light and smooth surfaced. I would recommend you hunt for them.
if you want to recondition the skillet you have buy yourself a can of yellow Easy Off oven cleaner. Must be the yellow can. Spray the entire skillet heavily put it in a plastic garbage bag and leave it on top of your Boiler or in a warm place for several days. Then wearing gloves bring it to your sink and carefully wash it off. Then I use steel wool to 0000 to work off the debris on the skillet. You may have to spray an repeat. When you get it all off and wash it down fully put it in an oven at 250 for one hour. Take it out and while hot wipe it lightly with solid Crisco on a paper towel entirely in an out. Put it back in the oven for another hour and then rub it down with dry paper towels. Make sure you remove all the Crisco with no residual. Let it cool an it should be good to go. I usually then cook bacon in mine as a first cook to reseason. I have converted totally caked on 100 year old cast iron back to well seasoned like new pieces. I hope this helps. If you can find the old stuff you will probably throw out the Lodge.
I've got a few modern Lodge skillets and they cook fine. I'd just reseason it at this point. Mitch is pretty much spot on with the Easy Off. It's nasty stuff so wear gloves. I had an old skillet that was my grandmothers that was caked up really bad and I had to do this method 4 or 5 times to get everything off of it. It's one of my best skillets now. Don't fall for the flax seed oil hype. I liked it at first and then after a while it started flaking off on me. If you season it in the oven you want to go 25 degrees over the oil's smoke point for an hour and put the oil on very thinly you'll have a sticky mess.
I have to agree with Dustin the flax oil (food grade) works for awhile and now I have a older Dutch oven that I hadn't used in awhile so I reseasoned it with the flax seed oil and it's flaking badly.I've got a few modern Lodge skillets and they cook fine. I'd just reseason it at this point. Mitch is pretty much spot on with the Easy Off. It's nasty stuff so wear gloves. I had an old skillet that was my grandmothers that was caked up really bad and I had to do this method 4 or 5 times to get everything off of it. It's one of my best skillets now. Don't fall for the flax seed oil hype. I liked it at first and then after a while it started flaking off on me. If you season it in the oven you want to go 25 degrees over the oil's smoke point for an hour and put the oil on very thinly you'll have a sticky mess.
Yes, oven cleaner. Repeat if necessary. Get some 100% flaxseed oil (the food grade version of linseed oil) and use that for seasoning. It's the only one that will actually polymerize and that's what you want. The best article about why this is can be found here.