Advice on Soldering Irons

[Anonymous]

I was wondering about any opinions on 3 different soldering irons I'm looking at.
1. Is a butane one rated at 70W but is a multi-fuction (torch, foam cutter) and comes in a nice case.

2.Second one is a Weller 25W with three different tips

3. THe third one is kind of like a base station with an adjustable wattage from 5-40W.

I like the first one , because of the portability, but am concerned the wattage may be two high. The other two I'm undecided.

Any soldering tips or info would be great. Also is there a solder with a lower melting point to use in the hobby?

Thanks

[cacole]

Go with #3, the adjustable wattage version, especially if you think you will ever have a need to use it for installing a DCC decoder into a non-DCC ready locomotive. A very small, almost needle-point tip, is also a necessity.

Silver solder, which is sold by the Rip-Off Shack, is a low-temperature replacement for the traditional 60/40 electronics solder. Larger electronics suppliers also carry this product if you have one near you and don't have to rely on overpriced Radio Shack items, or if you mail-order electronics items from places such as Mouser or Digi-Key.

[Anonymous]

There are assorted low-temperature solders designed for assembling brass/whitemetal kits - I think these are generally used with temperature-adjustable soldering irons. I'd advocate the adjustable soldering iron and a good selection of tips as well, though personally the only soldering I need to do is fixing electrical wiring together on the layout (and repairing the odd pair of headphones)!

The hot-knife option on the butane iron can be very useful for scenic work, if you're using expanded polystyrene (as found in electronics packaging). Cutting this with a normal knife or hacksaw produces massive amounts of "snow" and mess. Using the hot knife cutter will give a clean edge and cuts far more quickly.

[Dave Farquhar]

There can be times when the high-wattage gun can come in handy, especially if you are making long solder joints. An old trick is to use a high-wattage gun and high-temp solder for your first joints, then switch to progressively lower-temp solders and lower wattages as you progress on your project.

If you can only afford one, get the adjustable wattage gun. If you can afford to get both the adjustable wattage gun and the 75W gun, you'll find uses for both of them. If you can only afford to buy one at a time, buy the adjustable one first.

[nfmisso]

You can not get away with just one soldering tool, any more than one screw driver works for all jobs.

A 15-30W needle point is needed for DCC decoder and similar electronics work.

A 30-60W small chisel point for soldering feeder wires to track.

A 100W (or more) gun is great for soldering feeders to bus wires, and connectors on bus wires (and banana plugs on 12 ga. speaker wires for HT).

If you are not a professional user of the tools, the cheaper ones work just fine - mine are all from Harbor Freight:
http://www.harborfreight.com

[newhavenguy]

I'll throw my 2 cents worth in here and recommend the adjustable wattage unit. I bought one from Radio Shack and it works just fine for small and large soldering projects

I use low wattage for decoder installations and the higher for soldering buss line feeder and soldering track.

[EL PARRo]

I use a butane powered soldering iron. It's a "Weller / portasol" I can say nothing but good things about it. It's different than working with an electric one, but everything that I have needed it to do it has done well, and it comes with four different attatchments (soldering tip, torch, knife, and one that blows VERY hot air). The knife attatchment is only about 3/4" long, so it is limited to what it can do when it comes to cutting foam. The only thing that I really don't like about this soldering iron is that it's hard to find replacement tips for it.