Rory,
I'm just up to the point of the course where you're about to start finishing the coat. I've noticed that at least up to now you like to use an old, cold metal iron to cool down areas that you've pressed. It looks handy because it's small and I assume, relatively heavy. There's a place in NYC that sells old sewing tools where I might be able to find one.
--Do you use it instead of a wooden clapper because a clapper would absorb some of the steam?
--Do you prefer it because it's more convenient or just better than using an ironing board that suctions away the heat? I've also noticed that you seem to be happy with an ordinary home iron, as opposed to a fancy gravity feed system.
--Do you have any opinion about tailoring boards like this one? A friend of mine had one and it was a pleasure to use. https://www.amazon.com/Jacksons-Woodworks-01-011-Tailor-Board/dp/B07BJL6MCY
--I love your chest board, which in some fora I've seen described as a "tailoring buck." I have a ham, but it's a fraction of the size.
I just prefer the cold iron over the Clapper. I feel it’s more effective in drawing out the steam. I do have an industrial iron, 12lbs dowsing, have three of them actually. I use a domestic in both the video series and day to day because I want to show my students you don’t need fancy irons to make nice suits. I feel that chest boards and sleeve boards are more important than irons. I am not familiar with the board in the link, looks like an edge board to me.
A related question is what is the role of steam? I thought that for many suit fabrics dry heat was preferred to steam. In most natural fibers the role of steam is to carry heat to the place you want to have reach a particular heat, the water itself is not an advantage. When heated the natural material, be it wood or wool, relaxes, and then sets when it cools. But residual water is inimical to setting. If you come out of a lake, your suit does not generally look that great.
Over here in the US and Canada, most domestic irons can't be made terribly hot, they are plastic, and run off steam, and it all works up to a point. So it is what it is. But ideally, if there is enough heat, and the material is not so thick that one can't penetrate it without burning the surface, steam is undesirable. Though steam can work well on synthetics, because they melt with great heat, dry readily, and can be configured to work with the heat level of steam. Seems also to be good with cotton.
That is a question, most of what I know about this comes from bending wood. ;) Also 50 years of personal ironing. But the principles are the same from my modest experience with the clothes iron. At first I thought I would want a lot of steam so I bought an iron that ran off a boiler.