That site needs to use a smaller font on the FAQ page…
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I learned to pronounce it ‘sodder’. A colonel and a lieutenant on an island told me to do so just after putting mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce on their bologna sandwiches next to the quay. And don’t even ask me about what happened when I knocked over their aluminum vase in the garage.
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My experience is that soldering is not even remotely easy, especially to self-learn. But maybe I am unusually clumsy or have bad tools.
This was probably my favorite job, though it didn’t pay much. (The bonus, though, is that’s how I met my wife.) I’d be very interested to hear whether there are still any paying soldering jobs in the U.S. My wife and I worked for IBM, and I’m not sure they actually make anything anymore…
All the folks I know who solder professional do so in two contexts - making jewellery, and hand-building satellites. Which is to say, I know two people who do both (jewellery independently, and satellites for their employer). This is in Canada rather than the US, but I would assume that similar jobs exist in the US somewhere.
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It could be the tools, but I suspect you just haven’t had the right teacher yet. Once it “clicks” for you it’ll be dead simple, even with lousy tools.
@westcarleton: if you use a sponge, make sure you don’t use a plastic one. But a dry paper towel works just as well.
You need to get the tip wet and shiny with solder, but you’ve probably got a hard crust of oxide or something on there preventing adhesion. You’ll need to polish or etch that stuff off the tip a few milliseconds before you tin it… I have done this with steel wool, fine sandpaper, and acid flux on various different occasions when I’ve had the same problem. You don’t want to use coarse abrasives that will gouge the tip’s surface, especially if it’s a plated tip, but you need to get down to pure unoxidized metal right before you tin it.
Once it’s properly tinned you’ll rarely have this problem in the future.
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Soldering does require moderately steady hands, but no more so than most other kinds of manual labor. It’s easier, of course, if your first exposure isn’t highly heat-sensitive components on a particularly compact printed circuit board.
Much easier to learn if you can get someone to sit down with you and teach you one-on-one; there are things like recognizing/avoiding “cold” solder joints which are easier to demonstrate than to describe.
On the other hand, when a friend of mine wanted to build a memory card for an early PC himself, I suggested he consider wire-wrap. (At the time, the photocopier-toner-as-resist trick wasn’t yet in wide circulation.) I still like wire-wrap for one-off projects where it isn’t worth taking the time to lay out a pretty printed circuit board.
While leaded solder is a slight bit easier to work with, unless you have a lot of faith in your air handling setup I would strongly recommend lead-free, lest you find yourself an enthusiastic Bachmann supporter.
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