Thanks, I'll give that a try. How often would this need to be done?
Is it true that the pan shouldn't be washed after cooking but just wiped clean?

When used for cooking curries on high heat, they should never need re-seasoning aslong as you never scrub of wash them in soapy water as that will remove the non stick coating that you build up...oh and flavour.
Best bet is to rinse under a hot tap after use.

Looks absolutely top quality Stew.

It's not a stew, its a curry! 

Looks very appatising.keep up the good work.

I'm on the same thoughts as you snowdog,
There must be something at the garden centre that we can buy 2 off, then up turn one of them, and then cut a side hole in the lower one for the air, and a hole in the centre of the top one for the food entrance.

Now that makes sense to me, and if your worried about it exploding when it comes into contact with water, then im sure there are many paints you could apply to the outside of the pot that could resist the extreme tempeture.

Just my 2 pence worth.

Can someone tell me what all purpose seasoning is please (a link would be great) as i wish to make this base soon.
Thanks George for doing the new draft matey  ;D

Here you go Darth, i think this is the stuff thats used, have seen it in an asian store but never used it....Yet!
http://www.simplyspice.co.uk/purpose-seasoning-p-289.html

I bought an 8" black iron pan from a chinese/asian cash n carry(Wing Yip) in birmingham for
?4.60, it's the long handle type used by the BIR's (infact maybe the souce).
I seasoned the pan following the instructions on the bag that it came in, but after testing
a few curries i think this is unnessacery because the BIR's use metal which i used too and
it scratch of the patiana that i created by seasoning the pan.

My first observations of using this pan and thinking about BIR's was they heat the dry pan
for 30 secs on high heat--- i placed my pan on the biggest of my four gas rings for 30 secs
too, then removed from the heat while i added the fresh oil and the spices(bruces mix) and
chilli and some freshly pureed tin tomatoes, what i seen was the spices and tomato simering
in the oil, i think that because it's an iron pan then as soon as you heat it up using the
flame then it retains the heat, and in case of the BIR's it retains enough heat to cook the
spices without burning them....just like how other recipes tell you how to create a spice paste.

I then placed the pan back on the high flame and added a ladle of curry gravy and simmered
for 1 min then added another ladle of sauce and left simering on high heat for 5mins, what i
noticed was that it was bubbling all the time just like BIR's that i've watched, it was
bubbling at the edges first then slowly made it inwards till the whole pan was bubbling at
which point i noticed that the oil was coming to the surface all over the pan, then i added
some fresh chopped coriander and stirred in then serverd(poored this sauce into a bowl).

This test was used on a basic madras recipe i.e curry powder and chilli and i must say that
it tasted pretty good and it had that special smell about it.
The gravy used was petes casserole dish method except that i left the oil in the sauce and i
think that was what was seperating from my madras sauce as it cooked. I also tried crating a phall sauce.
Phall on the left and Madras on the right.

Just for your info i used http://www.resize2mail.com to change my picture size as i've just only done a reinstall and am lacking editing software, but for any newbes i'd recomend using that site just to resize so you can paste a good size here.