What I’ve noticed is that often “successful inventors” are the ones with 1 idea, that they’re so attached to they move heaven and earth and spend their kids’s college fund to market. If you have a lot of ideas all the time it’s easier to realize how long the odds are of making that one successful.
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The soldering I’ve done (for more hours I care to admit) is what a-holes call sweating. Air tight, liquid tight, won’t fail in 15-20 years, and looks good. No lead evar, and for the love of God you cant unseat a soldered piece 3mm away.
Clean, heat, flux, flow, then cool down immediately.
(Btw, mostly saxophones, the posts are feckin tricky)
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I know it. My cousin lived there for a while.
Of course not…I’m not British!
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Eye protection while soldering? WTF?
Oh man, you’re a bottomless well of fascination. Kim chi, fermented acorns, now saxophone work!? (Edit: sorry those other things were @redesigned. But still…)
I’ve got a Buescher Aristocrat alto (1950-ish) that I got out and played the other day for the first time in months. Needs work, but thankfully, not on its posts… I’m told that soldered-on tone holes are the most fun of all to work with.
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This is the joke where someone asks a pirate why there is a steering wheel coming out of his pants?
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Now that’s just mean! That’s straight up tech torture porn. 
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Can’t recall the last time I saw an engineer at the bench in a starched and pressed shirt. I think it might violate a fundamental law of nature.
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With no solder anywhere in sight.
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Watch old footage of pre 60’s labs and everyone had a tie on. I worked with a guy who came close. He must have either had a closet full of white oxford shirts and khakis, or washed the one set every night. It wasn’t like he was a dapper guy, I think it was a way to “simplify” and not think about what to wear.
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Soldered on tone holes want to make me run away screaming. A butt soldered joint with a 0.1mm reasonable threshold. Done by hand, no jigs.
That way madness lies 
The buescher horns are fine, fine instruments.
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The UK finally banned doctors from wearing ties - they are an infection vector because nobody washes silk ties on a daily basis. That wouldn’t be an issue as an engineer, but I still sort of cringe when I see everyone wearing full suits and ties no matter what they are doing in old film footage. Just seems really silly, and a bit uncomfortable and constricting.
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My theory is it was a Class thing: cultured, educated men wore jackets and ties, period. I love Halt and Catch Fire for portraying the changing of the guard of nerd culture to the slovenly Jolt drinking hacker model.
My son goes to a magnet HS with a dress code for boys that mandates ties at all times, and a jacket or V neck sweater October through April. The girls are supposed to have their own code, but basically only get gigged if they show too much skin or too short a skirt.
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My theory is that ties were invented as throttles for blood flow to the brain.
Explains management.
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Nuts in a bad way. Way too fiddly. When you’re dealing with little bitty things, the way to do it is to describe what you want with a computer and have a machine do it for you.
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Would a realtime control approach work, sort of like with robotic surgery?
In this case, a pick and place machine with integrated soldering rig (laser diode, perhaps?) and paste/flux dispenser, and a vacuum holder for the parts. Controlled via a webcam/joystick combo.
Possibly could be rigged from a 3d printer.
Cuts on the overhead of programming the thing for simple nonrepeated tasks.
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Auto erotic asphyxiation without the erotic.
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I gave up that battle long ago. When I’m not in the lab or my workshop, I’m a regular fashion plate, but white oxfords have the same relationship to those environments as to red wine and tomato sauce 
≠ 
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