Forget Iron Man...meet Iron Woman!

First off I have an admission to make.  Actually, come to think of it.... NOT an admission, as that suggests an element of guilt.

I'll rephrase.

I have a declaration to make.

I. Hate. Ironing.

There. I've said it.  

It's dull
It's boring
It's repetitive
It's ultimately pointless

HOWEVER.

I do seem to do a lot of it... for work purposes.  And as a result my workroom iron has a lot to contend with.  I last changed it in January 2010....that's over 7 years ago.  I blogged about it HERE, if you're interested in irons.  Although why you should be defies all sense and logic.

Anyway, I have spent a large chunk of this afternoon attempting to clean my workroom iron.

It was never going to end well.

As I said, my workroom iron has to cope with a lot..... glue, iron-on Vilene, Bondaweb, and a bewildering array of fabrics, from pure silks through to organdie ribbon.  Most materials I use are extremely fine and delicate, and therefore require a very low temperature.  However, occasionally I have to whack up the heat in order to smooth out a particularly obstinate piece of fabric, and it was while I was doing just that earlier, that the non-stick pad which is wrapped around my square ironing board, melted completely onto the non-stick surface of my iron.

Now.

I'm no expert on non-stick surfaces.  I don't know what they're made of or what complicated molecular polymer chains are needed to give them the requisite properties.  However, I do know that I expect them to be non-stick.  

Just to clarify.....my definition of 'non-stick' is something that doesn't stick to anything and nothing sticks to it.

I'm tending to give the benefit of the doubt to the iron.  Despite the fact that it was instrumental in causing the initial gooey, sticky mess which the non-stick ironing pad  transformed into, with just one light touch.  It's an iron.  It's meant to get hot.

The full force of my wrath was reserved for the ironing pad.  It surely should be capable of withstanding the heat of a hot iron.  Nowhere on the original packaging did it say "Only suitable for extremely low temperature ironing".  

It's an ironing board cover. It's meant to be ironed on!

Not only did it melt onto the soleplate of my iron, it also stuck thoroughly onto the board, necessitating me going at it with a screwdriver and Stanley knife to get the rock-hard stuff off.

After that I couldn't face tackling the iron, so left it to cool down completely before assessing the damage.  At first, some of the melted pad did peel off quite easily, but my initial delight soon turned to frustration as most of it seemed to have transmogrified into a completely new-to-science material which had apparently melded itself INTO the metal. 

I started off gently, with a non-scratch sponge scourer and a minuscule amount of non-scratch cream cleaner which made not a jot of difference.  I then graduated to a wire scourer and a more generous application of cream cleaner.  Finally I took to hacking at the hardened, blackened gunge with a selection of tools which were most definitely NOT non-scratch.... scalpel blades, pokey needle tool thing, screwdrivers, even coarse sandpaper.

After over an hour I have eventually managed to chip off the worst of it, but the iron will never be the same again.

*sigh*

I've accepted that I may have to replace the iron, depending on how it performs with some fine silk ribbon tomorrow.  However I most definitely need to replace the ironing pad, preferably one made with a non-melting, properly non-stick, fit for purpose fabric. 

Have I mentioned that I don't like ironing.......?