soldering guns

Just seeing what everyone uses for soldering guns. I will start it out. Power Probe Butane PPSK when on the road and an electrical with variable temperature when in the shop..

My standard soldering gun is an old WEN QuickHot 199k gun that has two stage ( 100 / 140 watt output ) trigger.

For light duty, thin gauge wire and close work, I use a Weller 40 watt pencil iron with chisel tip.

While I do carry a butane gas ( Weller Portasol ) soldering iron, I rarely use it.   ( An outlet is usually reachable with a 50 ft extension cord.)

Soldering is fun!

I have the power probe butane, but I'm not a big fan of it. I can't get it to heat up the ignition wiring enough to get a good solder out of it. But it does work nicely for small gauge wiring. Either way, I tend to use my soldering station (non-variable) for most of the soldering I have to do.Kenny

Owner / Technician

KKD Garage LLC

Albany, NY 12205

radio shack 120/230 watt soldering beast. its huge, i can solder 8 gauge with ease. i also have a snap-on butane self-igniting soldering iron which is only handy for small repairs and small gauge wire.

Small AC outlet Weller and gun at home, Weller Pyropens, small and large for mobile use plus a couple of Portasols. Except I hate the Portasols, Snap-On sold them as Bluepoints some years ago, then I discovered that Radiospares (English equivalent to Mouser or Farnell) were selling them for half the price of Snap-On.

I have had the Snap-irons(re-branded Weller) that doesn't last. Also, a power probe iron but the iron doesn't tin very well. My main choice is the Hakko FX-888. Awesome iron. Eric

Audiomaxx

528 East Fordham Road

Bronx NY 10458

Compustar Top Gun Dealer Award 2012-2013

A couple of thoughts here, back in my workshop days (oh the luxury!) we only used the red Weller guns with the lights in the tip, so much more convenient when getting to that nasty tiny wire at arm's reach. We also changed the power cables to 12' to reach the wall outlets without needing extensions. The down side was that the tip nuts constantly worked loose and they're an AF not metric so poke around trying to find the odd AF (1/4"?) spanner. Upside is that my Pyropens appear to generate more heat at the tip than the gun devices but outside the temperature right now in outer London is about 33f. Waiting for the Pyropen catalyst to heat up is like watching the grass grow. Another point relevant to this is the use of ROHS solder. A tip eater and I notice the Weller chisel tips I use have increased by 50% in cost in the last few months. Mind you in the last 3 years, ordinary 60/40 solder has quadrupled in price. If I was back in the workshop doing bench work, i.e. W2W for an R/S I'd definitely be using what Eric recommended. The 40 watt Weller that Kregg recommended is $35 in the UK.