[TowerTalk] Propane Soldering Irons ??

[Stan Labinsky Jr.]

Been using that Iroda / Solder-it Pro120 for years.
You're right, in cold weather it comes up just a tad short for heavy jobs,
even with the wide chisel tip, the model 04, IIRC.

That big Master Appliance tool looks interesting, they claim that it's more
like a 200 watt iron, but at 160.00 plus at Granger... hmmm... :-/

Still, with the even larger tip it might just be the ticket... school bus
roofs are cold in the winter time up here in the Lower Hudson Valley while
soldering replacement Motorola mounts onto the cable.

Stan

Oh, on the issue of the valve, etc. gumming up:  Use ONLY the Master
Appliance butane.
Ran into that issue with the Pro120 when they first came out many years ago.
The Solder-it rep told me that a bunch of those irons had been contaminated
at the factory with dirty fuel.
(They were testing every one that went out at the time.)
Apparently, one use was all it took to start a polymerization of even
cleanest of fuel into that nasty brown goo.
They sent me a replacement orifice and nozzle kit but I never needed it.
Just cleaned the old one several times and we're beyond that now.

The take-away from my story is this: smoke shop or big box pharmacy fuel is
NOT a good idea.

SL

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dick Green WC1M" <wc1m73 at gmail.com>
To: <richard at karlquist.com>; <k3mm at verizon.net>
Cc: <k2qmf at juno.com>; <towertalk at contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Propane Soldering Irons ??


> The Master Appliance looks almost identical to the Solder-It. I've had
> none
> of the problems with my Solder-It that Rick describes. Been using it for
> many years, but almost exclusively with a soldering tip (I've used the
> heater attachment for heat shrink tubing, but can't recall using the
> torch.)