I am a horrible solderer, and the tip on my iron is coated in lumps of solder and the such.. I've gotten better at soldering, but my iron is getting in the way.. is there any way to clean the tip or otherwise revive it without replacing it??
You should always clean your soldering iron by pushng it onto a wet sponge after each joint, apart from the last one, leaving it tinned helps protect it. If you have any of that metal wool/scrubber in the kitchen you can use that to scrub it up nice and neat.
What I usually do after I solder is get low grit sandpaper and with one rub, take all the foreign particles off the tip. This will usually expose the next layer of the tip which you can then "tin" the tip for your next project. Although don't do this with those expensive tips, my tips cost $2.47 for 2 so I usually do the above to clean them.
you can buy a little pot of tip tinner/cleaner. it does what it says on the tin and it smells abit like sugar when its burning.
Well, I just pushed on with a light sanding, going to go get new tips tommorow sometime as they are cheap and then be nicer to the new ones..hehehe Thanks!
I don't think it is that bad, when my soldering iron got too badly eroded, I just took it to a pedistal grinder, and took it to bare copper on the tip, then I tinned it right away. As long as the tip screws in, (no heating element in it) you could sand/grind it as far down as you like. As far a sponges and whatnot, I like to take a whole bunch of toilet paper, ball it, put it in a small paper cup, and add enough water so that when I presson the paper, it submerges, but when I stop pressing, the water level goes below the paper.
Same here. I get the really cheap tips and them down to a fine point and tin them. But when it comes to doing soldering work, the use of a wet-sponge constantly helps things alot.
blowtorch for silver so;dering Please forgive me if I am in the wrong forum. Can anyone advise as to what type, brand ,size etc of blowtorch to use for silver solder, probably hard silver solder ? I plan to build boilers for model steam engines using copper tubes. Thanks for any input.
blowtorch for silver soldering Please forgive me if I am in the wrong forum. Can anyone advise as to what type, brand ,size etc of blowtorch to use for silver solder, probably hard silver solder ? I plan to build boilers for model steam engines using copper tubes. Thanks for any input.
For a sponge, I get one of the wallpapering/kitchen pure cellulose sponges and cut it into slices like bread. Same stuff as what comes with many station irons when new. At least the ones that give you a wafer thin sponge that swells to size first time you wet it anyways. For about a 2 dollars you get a sponge the size of a small brick, and you have a lifetime supply of customizeable ( sp? ) sponges. I like the retinning paste in the little can, ( have it at work ) but was always too cheap to buy it for home. Oh yeah, here is some more cheapness on my part: 10 gauge copper wire for tips on my soldering gun.. 10 dollars for 2 tips from Weller, bah!.. $1.50 gets me a meter of 10/2 cable, enough for almost 30 tips.
