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I may discover steam next because these nifty little butane soldering/heating tools have doubtless been available for years. I’ve been using soldering irons and guns from birth – well, since age 10 — when Dad and I started building Heathkits because he couldn’t wait longer — and I’ve still got Weller soldering guns of almost every size and wattage. I rarely use them because circuit boards are tiny and fragile and the Wellers were built for point-to-point gauge wire circuits and components.
I’ve had in my parts kit a Williams FP-71 that I’d installed on a once owned Browning Model 71, sometime in the Nineties. As I’ve mentioned, my 2010 Winchester 1895 .405 shoots so high, out of the factory box, that the stock iron rear sight can’t get low enough to compensate for what appears to be a too-low factory front sight. Go figure, although the open rear is probably going to be replaced with a blank anyway. I’d be leary of a tang sight even if I wanted to go to the expense and trouble of removing the little sliding tang safety button, which I don’t. My personal favorites are micrometer aperture receiver sights, specifically the Redfield 70-H, or the Lyman 48-H for bolt actions, but trying to find a Lyman 56W for a Japanese 1895 seems like over-egging the pudding. It is a rice-powered Winchester and still would be, so being period obsessive would just be silly. In that light, the FP-71 looks like a nice solution.
But the Williams has been in its box a very long time and the controls are unacceptably tight, likely meaning there’s a thin layer of dusty gunk in the threads, probably dried preservative too. While I’ve got big electric Wellers and even bigger heat guns for rough work, I wanted something delicate and small that would heat the heads of small screws and parts. The only circuit board iron I had has been AWOL for decades.
I ran across this little jewel, sold on Amazon and elsewhere: an iRoda SolderPro 90K, for about 43 bucks, cordless, lightweight, runs off butane, and comes in a kit with several tips and some lead-free solder. The best thing about it is you don’t have to clamp up what you’re working on, struggle with a trailing power cord, or worry about getting intense heat on adjacent surfaces. You can literally put up to 1300F on a pin point, which will very quickly melt away cured LocTite from threads or, in my case, give enough differential expansion/contraction to free up the assembly. What’s especially nice is you can control the tip temperature by dialing the fuel flow up or down with a small wheel on the tool.
Everybody but me may have had one on their bench for a while but, if you don’t, I think it’s going to be very helpful and it is also very quick to set up. 
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
I’ve worn a couple of those butane soldiering irons out in my life time. They generally stop lighting, They still spark but I think the piezioelectric sparker gets weak. I do electronic work at times and have a good Weller soldiering and desoldiering station on my bench. I use freeze spray for checking temperature sensitive components which will also help with screws. Heating the base metal and then cool the screw and use some thermo contraction to give you a assist.
Bob
WACA Life Member--- NRA Life Member---- Cody Firearms member since 1991 Researching the Winchester 1873's
Email: [email protected]
1873man said
I’ve worn a couple of those butane soldiering irons out in my life time. They generally stop lighting, They still spark but I think the piezioelectric sparker gets weak. I do electronic work at times and have a good Weller soldiering and desoldiering station on my bench. I use freeze spray for checking temperature sensitive components which will also help with screws. Heating the base metal and then cool the screw and use some thermo contraction to give you a assist.Bob
Bob,
Thanks for the tip. I don’t think this butane iron is going to be long-lived and it will go into my “used seldom but when you need it, you really need it” gunsmithing box.
When I was into amateur radio as a kid, I started building stuff with my late Dad and now I’ve got his Weller guns as well as mine. But I got out of the hobby just when printed circuit boards were becoming the norm and have never fooled with them. About the only soldering I’ve done recently is to rejoin 24V sprinkler control wires the foundation repair contractor FUBARed. But I think I”ll lay in some freeze spray. Bill
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Bill,
I’ve built a few Heathkit projects when I first got into electronic repair just out of high school as a hobby. My high school had a great electronic classes. I played with early computers and business radios. Now the radios you plug them into a laptop to do anything. The new stuff is a lot more reliable and does not require much repair not like the old ones with discreet components. Its seems you were always replacing a final output amp or a cap lead would break from vibration.
Bob
WACA Life Member--- NRA Life Member---- Cody Firearms member since 1991 Researching the Winchester 1873's
Email: [email protected]
1873man said
Bill,I’ve built a few Heathkit projects when I first got into electronic repair just out of high school as a hobby. My high school had a great electronic classes. I played with early computers and business radios. Now the radios you plug them into a laptop to do anything. The new stuff is a lot more reliable and does not require much repair not like the old ones with discreet components. Its seems you were always replacing a final output amp or a cap lead would break from vibration.
Bob
Yes, Bob, it’s all more reliable but a lot of the adventure of scratch building is gone.
Around the Houston ship channel where I grew up, the Channel Communications Club had mostly working age men but they welcomed a 13 year old who had just gotten his General ticket, back when that meant something. I was treated like an adult, always included in Club activities, and learned a whole lot. It was a manly and safe experience I’ve never forgotten 67 years later.
The club met at the local fire station and maintained a rack-style homebuilt 1KW AM/CW transmitter there. We had the blessing of the city fathers because of hurricane threats and fire disaster potential from nearby tank farms and from tankers transiting the channel, less than two miles away. (The Amoco Virginia disaster blew windows out of our high school gym.)
FD threw in a multi-band rotatable beam on a tripod tower and somebody else furnished a tuned up WWII Hallicrafter receiver. On Winter evenings that pair of final stage 807a jugs warmed the whole room nicely. Quite an adventure for a kid, one that ended only after girls were invented.
My Dad was so tickled I’d passed the general license test he ordered Heathkit’s new Apache transmitter kit for us to build. It took a while but some of my fondest memories are of him sitting at the card table that stayed set up in my room for the purpose, studying a section of the instruction book and squinting through his pipe smoke, while I picked out and read off a color coded resistor from the box and made ready to solder it to the indicated post. Good times.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
November 7, 2015
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My soldering skills are somewhat deficient. I have an old power recliner that needs a few tiny wires re-soldered to a circuit board inside the control switch, somehow I broke two additional wires while attempting the repair. I suppose a footstool will have to do until I find a better solution.
Mike
Mike, I’d volunteer to help.but “tiny” is a red flag, followed by “inside.”
Age and too much morning espresso to keep the arthritis demons at bay, give me hand tremors that require one hand on a small tool and the other to brace and steady the tool hand. Any tool with fire or intense heat at its sharp end requires generous working space, bright light, and a clamped job.
I’m afraid my electronics repair days are behind me for anything less than point-to-point 18 gauge and larger.
I feel your pain.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
It seems that more and more I wish I had a third hand. And don’t say my wife. That’s like cutting off one of the ones I already have.
Don’t get me wrong. My wife can run every machine in the wood shop. She even took a clothes dryer apart where she worked, figured out the problem, got the part and fixed it. But if I want to go left she goes right. And she never puts my tools back where she found them.
Chuck said
It seems that more and more I wish I had a third hand. And don’t say my wife. That’s like cutting off one of the ones I already have.
There are certain firearms the disassembly and reassembly of which require a prehensile tail in addition to the standard 10 fingers.
I have seen Japanese master woodworkers sit on the floor and clamp the work with their bare feet while carving, drawfiling, boring, etc but trying to get the mainspring out of a 1907 self loader that way could prove hazardous.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
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