Ah, right. Yeah, that’s understandable, then!
The flux pen is probably all good. If your solder is plumbing solder then it won’t have any flux in it which will make life VERY difficult trying to use it for electronics.
See how you get on but if it’s still a struggle, I’d say get hold of some known-good leaded solder and see how you get on with that.
Not what you want for electronics work, especially if you are working on lead free systems.
The chemical makeup of plumbing flux makes it the wrong stuff to use.
Find a good no-clean electronics flux (and then clean it with IPA after you’re used it on a board)
I have a rework station and a pinecil. I would rather use the big station. But I keep it on my workbench in the basement. If I am in my office, I will go to the pinecil just because it is within arms reach. For a beginner or hobbyist, it is a great choice.
I would also pay very close attention to the type of solder. I use 0.5mm solder and it is a game changer. Solder that comes free with a lot of irons is much thicker and it is hard to put just the right amount on. I would also get lead free solder as a hobbyist. It probably doesn’t matter as much as someone who is soldering for a living. But I don’t have the PPE and work area safeguards to keep the solder contained. So I would rather it not have lead.
I very strongly disagree. I think it’s the other way around. For occupational exposure, lead free is much more important as you’ll be interacting with it more, for longer periods and potentially with in more concerning forms such as solder paste.
For lead solder at hobbyist levels of exposure there is very little risk. The danger from lead exposure is when it’s in compound or gaseous form, neither of which occurs when dealing with leaded solder. Most hobbyists will also not be doing ‘that’ much soldering so the time-based exposure is also extremely short.
The flux fumes on the other hand are a MUCH more severe issue and the fluxes used for lead free solder are dramatically more noxious and aggressive. Everyone should be using some way to clear flux fumes from their workspace regardless, even if that’s just a cheap $10 aliexpress thing that mostly just stirs them around. Crack a window.
Peter,
Regarding tweezers: I use both the normal squeeze-to-pick-up and also the cross type that hold the part without having to squeeze. I have three of those in various tip sizes with more and less “holding” strength.
Mike
I should have thought to mention the reverse action ones. We have a couple of pairs and I find them absolutely horrible for surface mount stuff but some people really like them. Worth trying, at least.
I agree with the smaller surface mount stuff. you really need a long, flexible, tiny tip when working with the small parts. The flexible nature of the longer pair makes it easier to control the holding pressure and the release without sending the part flying.
Mike
I flip-flop on solder lead content.
On the one hand, 60/40 tin/lead is super easy to use, and gives a more secure mechanical and electrical connection more easily. I think it is telling that the exemptions for leaded solder include high reliability items like computer servers and components. Manynof these are now made lead-free as well, but only after new manufacturing processes, and some still aren’t lead free.I think of myself as doing a fair amount of hobbyist soldering, and still have some of a spool of 60/40 that I bought in the 20th century 
.
On the other hand, lead is terrible. It’s a nerve toxin that stays in your body for a very long time, and has known detrimental effects on your brain. What we used to think of as insignificant exposure (lead content in gasoline, or in paint) turned put to have measureable and significant impact on society. A large number of societies measured a direct correlation with removal of leaded fuels with a reduction in violence.
So I flip-flop. All of my SMT soldering stuff is lead-free, and I have a spool of lead-free solder and the (nasty) flux that goes with. I generally use solid core solder, so flux is definitely a thing. I have some for tin/lead, some for lead free, and the big tub of plumbing solder that goes with the thick plumbing solder used with a torch.
I have an older Radio Shack solder station but it doesn’t get much use. For a good while now I have been using a Pinecil soldering iron and love them. But for Christmas I got a Fanttik T1 Max and it has been great so far as well. Love that its truly cordless.
I have been using this .8mm solder that I saw recommended as GREAT solder a few places. It has been working great for my needs. And using this flux as well. I just use an acid brush to put it where I need it if its on a PCB, or just stick the end of the wire/end stop in it for that type of thing. 99.9% of the time it seems like I am just soldering endstops LOL.
I have yet to give hot air a try. But maybe one day. I have thought about picking up a hot air station if nothing else to use for heat shrink
Yes, lead is definitely bad, but we DO NOT see elevated lead levels due to routine exposure to soldering. Even in manufacturing plants where they have long term exposure to lead wave soldering baths we don’t see elevated lead levels.
I’ve had blood lead level tests done every year for the past decade due to indoor pistol shooting and that caused a raise in blood lead levels which came under control once I started using a respirator and dropped when I eventually gave it up. Since then my lead levels have been within normal limits despite doing quite a lot of leaded soldering. One product line that I have needs hand-soldering of 2x 16 pin through-hole connectors so I do that myself. I did 250 boards in the last batch so 8000 through-holes soldered, something like 1/3 of a 500g reel of solder used. I’ve done half a dozen of those batches over the years without issue.
There’s a VERY important distinction there between elemental lead and lead compounds. Solder is elemental lead in an alloy. My understanding is that you can basically eat a chunk of lead and not have your lead levels increase noticeably, while any exposure to lead-compound gases lead to elevated blood lead levels.
Those lead compounds are what we put in gasoline and what we use in the primers for cased ammunition, which is where the lead exposure comes from. They make lead-free primers for use in indoor ranges but they’re sadly not widespread.
So while I agree that lead is bad, I do not think that exposure to metallic lead is remotely dangerous, especially not in hobbyist soldering conditions and quantities.
Hot air stations are pretty useful but in vastly more limited circumstances than most people think. The only thing I routinely use ours for is desoldering ICs. I’ve seen people use them with solder paste for assembly but in my experience it doesn’t do a good job, it takes too long to heat, dries out the flux and blows the paste around leading to potential issues like un-flowed paste under the IC etc. At that point I’d rather just use the iron directly or get a cheap hot-plate and do it that way.
I also wouldn’t get one for heat-shrink unless you’re only ever using tiny heat-shrink. A better bet would be something like a heat gun or plastic welder.
I wasn’t sure if the US would have them but it looks like they do and at a pretty crazy cheap price:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/TACKLIFE-Heat-Gun-1500W-572-F-932-F-Dual-Temperature-Hot-Air-Gun-HGP68AC/629026361?classType=REGULAR&athbdg=L1600
Something like that will be infinitely better than a hot air station for heat-shrink.
Edit: Those style heat guns are also pretty useful if you’re working with heavy copper boards as a pre-heater, or if you need to test a temperature sensor on a heat-sink, need to thermally cycle some phase-change thermal compound, all sorts. I get a lot of use out of ours.
Yeah I have a heat gun like that. But its huge for doing the mostly small heat shrink I do. Currently I use one of these butane torches, with the soldering end on it but the tip not installed. It works well but needs refilling often.
Do you have a reducing tip for the heat gun? Those are pretty helpful for small stuff, although I usually just sit the thing on my desk pointing upwards and use that even for ~2mm OD heat-shrink on tiny stuff.
I’d probably go find a lighter before I’d reach for the hot-air station for that, personally.
try and find it though. I looked hard, the market has been cleaned up of lead solder.
It holds much better and I think I just finished off the role I had from my dad!
Sounds like I should just stick with what I have been using LOL.
Anything else I am using that I should be doing something different?
That may depend on where you’re looking, it’s very readily available but potentially more from electronics suppliers than hobby shops or similar.
The link above has a few different manufacturers selling several different sizes in several different alloys, all leaded.
I found a couple of options in an Aus website too, as well as on Amazon in the US.
Mouser has 400 listings for tin/lead solder (including some truly wacky alloys that I’ve never used like Sn03/Pb95/Ag2… Wtf is that?!
Amazon has ~10 pages of results for 60/40 solder alone.
I got one of these recently which works great for those solder seal heat shrink butt connectors.
If you think you’d have a use for an air station then definitely grab one, I’m a huge fan of just buying tools and seeing if they work out. My situation might be vastly different to yours and you might be trying to solve a different problem. If you’re finding that a butane torch works then a hot air iron with a large nozzle is likely to be pretty close to a butane iron on its lowest setting.
We have 3 different types of air stations here, a Hakko all-in-one rework station that’s really for ultra-precise work and doesn’t have enough airflow to be usable for a lot of things, a bigger Hakko ~250W unit that is a bit of a blunt instrument and made for doing stuff like large BGA rework on high layer count boards etc. then a couple f other ones that are a halfway point that we scavenged when a client of ours went out of business.
I have one of the Hakko rework stations at home and I think I’d use it maybe once a year, when the hot air gun gets used maybe once every couple of weeks.
Edit: That thing that Jason posted looks like a neat half-way point, I hadn’t seen one that size. 3D printing a clamp for it so it’ll stand upright would be pretty cool, I’ll have to look out for that.
The ‘reflector’ type tips like that shows can be good for heat-shrink too, although I find myself just burning myself on them more often than not so I don’t bother. We do use one if we’re doing heavy-wall glue-filled heat-shrink as that’s much more of a pain in the ass to get evenly hot.
Not sure what you mean there, sorry? If that’s a dig at me being overly critical or something then my apologies, I tend to get a bit carried away with trying to help people sometimes! 
That’s not too bad. I like the little shield to keep heat from going on stuff behind it. And not a bad price either. Thanks!
Not at all meant as a dig! I apologize if it came across that way. I posted earlier all the things I am using currently and was just wondering your opinion. I am just taking an opportunity to learn from a pro!