Soldering Irons And Solder

There is more to soldering than getting the iron hot and soldering wires.

 

In model railroading, at some point you are going to need to solder a joint or wires together. Unless you grew up with someone who knew how to solder, you probably don’t know much about how to do it.

 

In this post, I will explain what solder you should be using, the soldering irons that are available, and how to use flux.

 

On the market, you can find all kinds of soldering irons. There are butane, cordless, solder guns, soldering stations, and of course just the soldering iron. So which one do you choose?

 

Many modelers will have a couple. Usually, a cordless or butane and a regular iron or soldering station. The cordless and butane soldering irons are very handy when it comes to soldering right there on the layout. The disadvantage is they will need to be recharged often or you will need to refuel them. The corded irons and the workstations are the workhorses. You plug them into the wall and you can use them as long as you need to without recharging or refueling. The disadvantage with these is that you are limited by the cord and must be plugged into a wall outlet. This is why many modelers have two different kinds of soldering irons. The workstation iron has a dial where you can control how hot your iron gets, which is a plus if you solder a lot of PCB boards and you need the iron only hot enough to melt the solder.

 

What type of solder you use also matters. I’m not going to discuss all of them. The only solder you should be using is resin core 60/40 solder. If you want to know more about solder, then I would check out some YouTube videos. But for model railroading, 60/40 resin-core solder is all you should be using.

 

With most soldering irons, the soldering tips can be changed and there are also different sizes of tips too. The tips you will be using the most are going to be the fine and medium point tips. In modeling, you don’t need the other tips, so save your money on buying different types of tips unless you plan on doing soldering for something other than your railroad.

 

The last thing you need to know about soldering is using flux.

 

Flux is like a paste. You apply a little bit of flux to the area or wires you are going to solder. What flux does is, as soon as your hot iron touches it, it instantly turns into a liquid. This liquid will grab onto your solder and run with it. You want this to happen because it takes the solder and gets into the tiny gaps between your wires and gives them a good bond. If you’re soldering rail joints, it will help get the solder in both sides of the joint, making a good, tough joint.

 

In the next post, I will explain how to prep your iron and tip and how to care for them so that they will last a long time.

 

Happy railroading!