![]() ![]() He’s got irons that spent their working days flattening shirts, irons that were designed to make weather-worn hats look as good as the day they were blocked, and a slew of irons engineered for specialty work, from polishing starched collars and cuffs to pressing fluted flourishes into the ends of starched Victorian skirts. McCartney has been collecting antique sad irons (“sad” being a derivation of an Old English word for “solid”) since he was in high school his first iron cost him a dollar. “In the latter half of the 1800s, the woods were full of inventors.” That’s the kind of enormity you get with irons.” “You’ve got your race cars, pedal cars, sports cars, vans, and let’s throw some trucks in there as well. “Talking about the diversity of irons is like talking about the diversity of cars,” McCartney tells me over the phone. But if you really want to get Kevin McCartney going, ask him about irons, you know, those weighty symbols of domestic drudgery designed to press wrinkled fabric flat. For example, he might point out that iron is the most abundant element on Earth, that it’s magnetic, and that when iron meets oxygen, rust happens. Note how the tank attaches to the heated part of the iron via a wooden arc, no doubt to keep the handle from overheating and turning it into a small bomb.Īs a professor of geology, Kevin McCartney can tell you all sorts of interesting things about iron. This 1909 iron has a handle that doubles as a liquid-fuel tank.
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