Thursday, October 31, 2019

Solder tips by dan kb6nu

The photo at right accompanied a reddit post with the title, “some things just can’t be replaced” appeared on reddit a couple of days ago. I immediately thought of the Heathkit solder spool that I used and re-used for many years. When the spool ran out, I would wind twenty feet or so of fresh solder onto the spool.
Comments on this post morphed from  a discussion of soldering techniques to the demise of Radio Shack. Before that happened, however, there were a few good soldering tips:
I liked the RadioShack solder “pencil” tubes, which were just tightly coiled solder in a plastic tube. I would wrap solder from a spool tightly around a pen, slide it off, and put it back in the tube because it was just so much easier to handle.
I use an empty pill bottle, with a hole drilled in the center of the lid. I coil up some solder and put  it in bottle and feed it out through the hole. I can control it with my thumb, it stands on it’s own for tinning the tip handsfree, and stores easily.
I wind new solder into my empty braid containers. They’re much easier in the hand, they keep the gray dust off my fingers, and they keep it from unspooling loose in my toolbox.
Do yourself a favor and don’t buy any more 60/40. Get some decent 63/37 from a manufacturer like Kester. Makes a big difference. 63/37 is eutectic so the whole mass melts/freezes at the same time, yielding fewer cold solder joints. At least that’s my understanding – I haven’t used 60/40 since I discovered eutectic.
I’m going to try the solder braid container idea and see how that works. Do any of you have a good soldering tip?

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