Ease Dry Iron

Details

A plain dry iron, and the first thing to say is when it is the right buy. If you iron cotton and linen, if there is already a spray bottle beside the board, if the tap water is hard, or if the iron gets shared in a hostel or a shop, this is the better machine: there is no tank to leak, no steam chamber to scale and no board to fail, and it will still be working in fifteen years. If you mostly press polyester shirts in a hurry, or you want to steam a jacket on a hanger, buy the steam iron instead, because a dry iron will not do either quickly. Two things are cheated in this category. The first is the soleplate. A sprayed PTFE non stick coating glides beautifully for two years and then wears through at the tip, and a flaked coating marks clothes, which is why so many cheap irons end up with a strip of cloth under them. Ours is die cast aluminium, hard anodised, which is an oxide layer grown out of the metal rather than sprayed onto it, so there is nothing on it to come off. The second is the flex and the plug. An iron is a resistive load pulled around by its cord, and the cord entry flexes tens of thousands of times, so heavy duty is not a specification. Ours is 3 core with a 1.0 sq mm conductor. At 1000 W and 230 V the iron draws 4.35 A and at 1200 W it draws 5.2 A, both inside a 6 A plug, and the arithmetic is on the page so you can check the next iron you buy against it.

• Die cast aluminium soleplate, hard anodised, 6 mm thick at the heel, with a smooth tip for collars. No sprayed non stick, nothing to flake
• Mechanical bimetal thermostat on a detented dial marked for synthetic at about 110 C, silk and wool at about 150 C, cotton at about 200 C and linen at about 230 C
• A one shot thermal fuse rated 240 C sits in series with the element, so a stuck thermostat cannot take the plate past it
• Class I, earthed, three pin, and every unit earth continuity tested before it leaves the line. A metal soleplate appliance on a two pin plug is a fault, not a saving
• 1.2 kg on the 1000 W and 1.5 kg on the 1200 W. The weight is deliberate, because on cotton the press does half the work
• Reaches the cotton setting in about 70 seconds on the 1000 W and 65 on the 1200 W. That is the plate's mass times its specific heat times the rise, divided by the watts, and it works out
• Zero standby draw, because a bimetal thermostat has no always on circuit behind it
• Cord is a replaceable assembly, 3 core, 1.0 sq mm, 1.8 m, with a 360 degree swivel, and it is a stocked part
• Element, thermostat, cord assembly and soleplate are all stocked. Spares held 5 years, on a spares bank bought with the first production run, a five year supply clause with the maker, and the handle, shell and soleplate tooling held in our name
• 2 years comprehensive, 3 years separately on the heating element
• Left out: no water tank to leak, no steam holes to scale, no circuit board, no moulded in cord
• There is no Shuunnya service network. A claim is answered by sending the part, and the cord assembly is an owner fit. We do not promise a turnaround, because we cannot keep one yet