A different kind of station
Chris Leigh has taken the plunge and invested in a temperature‑controlled soldering setup.
In this month’s ‘Backscene’ (see page 138), I refer to my desire to get on with building some kits that I’ve had for a long time. Robert Kosmider’s letter, which is still with the Lambourn Valley coach kits, is dated 2006, so I’ve had them for 17 years!
The purchase of a soldering station was the catalyst for opening the boxes and reminding myself that I had started building one of the pair. I had got no further than some preliminary work assembling the floor and solebars.
I’ve never owned a soldering station before and I had very little idea what I was buying. To avoid investing a fortune in something unsuitable, I bought from Amazon, the main criterion being price.
I did not want to risk wasting much more than £50 so I ordered accordingly. Experience breeds caution and I have bought some rubbish from Amazon, including a foot pump which bent the moment I put my foot on it! Being Amazon, the soldering station arrived next day.
It consists of a control unit with a mains plug and a soldering iron permanently attached to the control unit by a lead about 4ft long. There is also a stand – which is immensely useful, and much better than any of my previous stands which were bought separately from the irons. The base of this stand includes a location for the strange heat-resistant sponge which looks like a piece of card but swells up when you wet it. This is for wiping the iron tip and, again, it has proved a boon to my soldering technique.
On the down side, the soldering iron itself is much smaller than I expected, only some 7in long, most of which is the handle. In the past, my ‘heavy’ soldering on kits was done with a 65 watt iron, which is a truly massive beast! It was immediately clear that the soldering station was not going to give me the soldering power that I need for larger brass parts. However, I have found that my trusty old Henley Solon 25 watt iron (so old that it has ‘Made in England’ on the handle!) is enough for all the jobs I’ve needed so far, while the soldering station is brilliant for all the small work. And these coaches do have a substantial amount of small detail work that needs to be soldered.
The soldering station has a control knob by which you dial up the temperature. I had no idea what the temperature should be for the work I’m doing, so it has been a trial and error exercise. At least, if I need to solder any whitemetal parts I’ll be able to lower the heat enough to give me half a chance of success. It also has a standby mode by which it switches the heat off when not used for a while and heats up again very rapidly when it is picked up. The two indications on the front of the control panel show the temperature to which it is set and the temperature it has reached.
I’m pleased, so far, and it has given me the confidence to complete the first coach and to tackle the second, which is unstarted. Then I’ll turn my attention to the body of Eadweade, having never tackled an
‘O’ gauge locomotive before.