Learning to solder. Advice?

[Flyby Knight]

I'm preparing to put a Nano Biscotti in my first saber. I've gotten a decent soldering iron, solder wick, ect... I've never soldered a thing in my life before. Should be fun, right?

I bought a 'blank' circuit board to practice on. If need be I'll get another one and keep practicing till I feel confident enough for the real thing. I found a few tutorial videos too... I like learning new skills, so I'm excited rather than nervous. Still.... any advice, comments, or anything else you might have to say would be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[Silver Serpent]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOdnGUMi7lQ is how I learned. Erv has a number of other great videos to watch as well.

Some things to keep in mind:
1. Wear safety glasses. Hot solder can pop and spatter on your face.
2. Don't use lead-free solder. 60/40 leaded solder is much easier to learn with.
3. Get a thin gauge solder. It'll melt easier than the thick stuff, and you won't have big globs of solder everywhere.
4. Practice. Practice some more. It gets easier with time.
5. The brass sponge tip cleaners are MUCH better than the damp sponge that most soldering irons come with.
6. Keep your tip clean. You'll get better heat transfer, and cleaner solder joints if you do.

[Arsies]

7- don't use abrasive file to clean your soldering tip, it will destroy it
8- take care about your fingers, soft gloves could be a good idea at first even if it's more difficult to solder with them, but it's better than burn yourself
9- a rapier support is heavy recomended.
10 - a common mistake first times is to try to solder a led once you attached it to your heat sink, you will see it's almost impossible and maybe you don't know why the think don't became hot enought.

[Yoshi-Taka]

11 - Take your time. There's no reason to rush. That's how mistakes are made.
12 - If you can, use a pointed tipped soldering iron.
13 - Getting burned sucks. I've never tried gloves, but I've been burned enough times to know that burns suck. Burns from soldering lead to the Dark Side.

[amwolf]

14 - Helping hands, cause you've only got 2 and one is holding the iron.
15 - See tip #4. Wire is cheap, very little else in the hobby is. Making short wires into a long one until you're comfortable is an easy and stress-free thing to do.
16 - Don't forget the heat shrink, as it's annoying to have to desolder that lovely connection you just made to put it on. Refer to tip #11.

[Flyby Knight]

you guys really are awesome...

[Sevinzol]

You said you had a soldering iron. You didn't mention the wattage. for what we are doing you want a low wattage, 25W not 40W. Its very easy to "lift trances" on printed circuit boards with an iron that is too hot.

[Flyby Knight]

It's 20 watts. Says it goes to 860 F (460 C).

[Silver Serpent]

That'll be plenty for saberwork.

[Flyby Knight]

ok... a few things.

#6 - Keep the tip clean. Should i be 'tinning' the tip?
#9 - a rapier support. I don't know what this means. My iron came with a little stand for it to sit on, did you mean that?
#8 & 13 - Soft gloves Not a bad idea. I'm a chef, I get burned fairly frequently. It does indeed suck, but I'm prepared for it.