What soldering irons does anybody recommend for soldering track and feeder wires? What type of solder is best to use? Where’s the best place to buy a soldering iron from?
I would get an inexpensive temperature adjustable soldering station. It will last you for many years. I got one from an eBay seller for about $30. There are more expensive ones and cheaper ones. You will get many recommendations. My station comes with a 40 watt iron, and I only turn the temp up 3/4 of the way for most uses. Keep solder on the tip when not in use, or just sitting with the heat on. Clean the tip on a wet sponge just before soldering something. Leave some solder on it when you put it back in the holder.
Use 60/40 or 63/37 solder. Also get some rosin flux, not that you will need it all the time, but you will need some extra flux once in a while. Do NOT use Micro-Mark Tix flux. It is an acid flux. (Just look up the main component on the Internet.)
There have been other threads on this subject in the Forum archives. Just do a search and you will turn up a lot of information.
Just as the previous post said about the iron, I get the nickel silver bearing solder from Radio Shack it works great and has a low melting temp for nickel silver track and wiring and it helps save the ties .Jim.
Radio Shak should have everything that you need. Just tell them what your looking to do, and they should be able to point you in the right direction.
I go to Radio Shack when I need something right now, but if I have time to wait i shop on line.
All Electronics, Micro Mark, etc.
I agree about the Shack as a source, if you are planning on doing any soldering of wires to engine components such as adding DCC to a non-DCC engine then spend the few dollars and get a digital temp iron.
Solid feeder wires and lots of practice on a bit of scrap rail will give you the skills you need to make a good electrical AND mechanical connection.
god luck and keep on rollin.
Hardware stores are the place to go. Right now they carry two items, small pencil irons of about 30 watts power and soldering guns in the 150 watt range. The big 150 watt irons are no longer carried by the average hardware store.
To solder rail I like more power than 30 watts. Which means a gun unless you luck out and find an old big iron somewhere.
The soldering stations sold for electronics work are nice, I have one, but they are expensive and not needed for soldering wire and rail. The soldering stations are thermostatically controlled to keep the iron temp low to avoid overheating delicate semiconductors. Nickel silver rail doesn’t care how hot it gets, you might as well buy just a conventional soldering iron or soldering gun.
The tips of irons and guns are either solid copper or tin plated iron. Both kinds of tip must be “tinned” i.e. covered with molten solder. While hot, the tip is continually “oxidizing” ,the hot metal grabs oxygen out of the air and forms a metal oxide, otherwise known as crud.
You need to keep adding solder to the tip and rubbing off the crud on a damp rag or sponge. If you omit this procedure for keeping the tip tinned, sooner or later the tinning burns off exposing the base metal of the tip. For a copper tip you can recover by filing to tip bright, dipping it in flux, powering up the iron or gun and melting solder. The solder will coat the bare copper tip and stick. If the tip is plated iron, it can be VERY difficult to retin a burned tip, so difficult that you need to replace the tip. If buying new, you want a tool with a replaceable tip, and you want to buy a couple of spare tips. If you buy a no-name tool, finding replacement tips in the future may be difficult-to-impossible.
Irons want a metal stand of some kind to set them on when hot but not being used.&nb