If the amount of starch you are now using is giving you the crisp results you’re after and your satisfied, then what your doing is OK.  My only suggestion would be to remove as much of the moisture as possible, with the DRY setting of your iron.

Also, spray starch is expensive.  When I was still working I starched all my shirts and used regular old fashioned liquid starch, like Faultless or Vano, mixed 50/50 with water in a spray bottle.   I sprayed the shirts and rolled them up, then ironed them in the order of spraying the starch on, the little time they were allowed to sit let them become uniformly damp with the starch.

And if you get a starch build up on the sole plate of your iron, here’s and old trick my Mom and Grandma used.  Place a sheet of wax paper on top of a towel, sprinkle regular table salt onto the wax paper and then run the iron back and forth over the salt using the cotton setting, doing so until the starch build up comes off.

I really liked wearing starched shirts and my coworkers used to comment on the nice creases my shirts had, which can only be accomplished by using starch when you iron.

Eddie

Liquid starch is usually diluted with water, but I’ve heard of some people using it straight out of the bottle for a very heavy starching.  

You can either dilute it in a basin or sink and submerge the items to be starched and then wring them out and let them dry until damp, then iron.  This method would be used if you are going to starch a lot of things at once, like a large linen or cotton tablecloth and napkins.  You could also do this in a TL washer, using minimal water level, then spin out the starch, allow items to dry until damp and iron.

I always found that just using a spray bottle with a 50/50 dilution as I outlined in reply #1was the easiest method of all.

If you buy a bottle of liquid starch you’ll find the instructions for the various ways it can be used.

I always preferred Vano starch, I don’t know if it's even made anymore, or if you can even buy it anyplace other than California.  Here it used to be the starch of choice for anyone I knew.  They had a very catchy commercial, “If your not using Vano, you’re working too hard”, and an iron with wings used to seemingly glide over the ironing board.

No matter what, liquid starch is far superior to the canned spray stuff.

And like Matt, I think a heavy iron is the only way to go, preferably a vintage iron.  And when starching, always use the dry setting, you don’t want to use steam when you’re trying to dry out the starch.

Eddie