Irons
 

I use my Black & Decker iron with t-shirt transfers made on my ink jet printer. In recent years they haven't been coming out very well and I'm guessing that the iron isn't getting hot enough. Which irons, in your experience get hotter than others? When I press seams for piecing with the Black & Decker, it's fine, but on its hottest setting it would never scorch anything.
Does anyone have any suggestions for t-shirt transfer ironing?

On the few times I tried doing this, I had very little luck. We have a local embroidery shop that has one of the big presses like you see in t-shirt shops where they put various decals on the shirts. The shop owner graciously pressed my printouts on the t-shirts for a small fee - I think it was about $1/shirt. Well worth it. Those particular shirts' decals have lasted for decades through some really hard wear and washings. Perhaps you have something like that near to you that might be worth your while?

My only other suggestion would be to try to pick up a vintage dry iron at a yard sale. Those things seem to get really hot.

My Rowenta Pro8585 gets hotter and has more steam than any other iron I have had.

Hello! My Rowenta PowerGlide2 is a fantastic iron. The temperature settings are strong. I can tell you that I recently used an Oliso iron at a workshop, and it convinced me not to purchase one. It barely kept up with our basic ironing needs. Good luck!

Rowenta no longer makes the model I have (had) for years, and it recently stopped functioning, but I agree with bungalow59 about the temperature; it got really hot fast and stayed hot. I used it with steam sometimes, but prefer to spray from a bottle, and it worked great. Now I'm shopping, too, and want to stay with Rowenta, but they have a wide selection which makes it difficult to choose. I respect the Rowenta brand.

The higher the wattage the quicker and hotter the iron will get.

i actually believe it's just a luck of the draw anymore. That's why I won't pay a lot of money for an iron. I stopped at an estate sale the other day. Paid $2 for an old GE. It was like being at home and ironing my dad's work pants. I didn't even dampen a piece of muslin to try it out and it got rid of the wrinkles like nobody's business. If it only last for a few months, I still got my money's worth. Heavy and hot and tried the different settings worked like a charm. so far.

After having been very disappointed by a couple of high-priced irons over the years, I've become a big fan of cheap irons (especially Black and Decker) that I can throw away when they begin to fail. While I hate adding to the landfill, I feel better about ditching a $25 iron than a $50+ iron, and in my experience they fail at about the same rate.

That said, I've never owned a Rowenta, and I've never done a t-shirt transfer.

Definitely the case. I'm a Rowenta gal also. I've not had the issues that many others here have reported. I'm happy with the results generally from my Rowenta but still did not get the desired results on the t-shirt transfers I was doing even with that.

Funny you should ask. I've had a Rowenta for years that gets very hot. I've bought several other brands during the past years, but none of them gets as hot.