Box irons, charcoal irons If you make the base of your iron into a container you can put glowing coals inside it and keep it hot a bit longer. This is a charcoal iron, and the photograph (right) shows one being used in India, where it's not unusual to have your ironing done by a "press wallah" at a stall with a brazier nearby.

Oct 31, 2007 · A pan of hot embers drops into the trivet, which stands on a sheet-iron tray. Another sheet of iron is fixed under the woodwork above the fire, so that there is no danger of burning the bed.

Several museums in East European countries display vintage irons with a rooster (cockerel) sitting on the front. Why is a rooster a common decoration for a charcoal-filled box iron? For a start it’s not just an ornament, it’s also a good shape for the catch to open the lid.

Fluting, goffering, Italian, crimping, poking irons Anyone who's pressed clothes with an iron on a flat surface knows it's easy to make a crease. So how can you iron waves of ruffles and keep the flounces without flattening them? One solution was a …

A kitchen table or a board supported by two chairs were both in common use for ironing before the days of the mass-market folding ironing board. (See picture left of a woman using a flatiron on a board balanced over chairs.)

To accomplish this object I place within the iron and close to its face a resistance, preferably of carbon, and of such size and shape that it will heat the face of the irons sufficiently and equally.

They're going to make life so much easier: no more running backwards and forwards to a hot stove or fire to change a cool flat iron for a freshly heated one, no more working in a roasting hot kitchen, no more trying to keep fireplace ash off the irons. Some of the self-heating irons use gas. Others carry little tanks of alcohol or gasoline.