For Sale: Awesome soldering iron!

[Grinder]

This is more an FYI for everyone who is hunting for a soldering iron on Saturday race day....

Canadian Tire has an 80W pencil iron with a HUGE tip.  It would be perfect for the type of heat sucking soldering we do like batteries and motor leads.  Its a great iron for the price - much better than a soldering gun.  Its really cheap at $30 and comes with an extra smaller (but still quite substantial) tip and an absolutely pathetic stand.  Any leads on a soldering stand post them here.

Props to Jody for finding this one.....

[SgRddY]

i just picked up a stand at radio shark now called "something something"  can't remember.   it's $8.99, and it is nice and heavy.  i am sure it is way better than the one u got with your iron at crappy tire.  not sure why my 60w is just not doing the trick and the 80w at queale electronics has way too big of a tip.  can you pm me a pic of the crappy tire one? i might just have to go a pick up one.  i've all over for a nice and strong one but no luck yet.  thanks.

ken

[haddow]

I got a beefy stand from quale electronics for less than 10 bucks

[RYY]

Question on the iron.  Why is the iron preffered over a gun when is it not the guns that usually have a way higher wattage?
RYY

[Tom]

Soldering irons tend to have a higher heat, while soldering guns tend to have a higher temperature.

The heat capacity of a typical iron tip is much higher than the heat capacity of a typical gun tip.  A soldering gun will heat up very quickly to a very high temperature.  This temperature is too high for a lot of soldering work that you may want to do.

Contrast this with a soldering iron.  They typically take much longer to heat up.  This is for two reasons; one, they are lower power, and will also operate at a lower temperature, which is more appropriate for most soldering work.  Secondly, the tip has a higher heat capacity, which means it takes more energy to change its temperature.

So, if you use a gun to solder, the tip temperature will start out very high, and will drop quite a bit if you are soldering something big (like 12 gauge wires, motors, etc.), while a soldering iron tip temperature will start out lower than the gun, but will not change very much when you do a joint.

A gun is great for a quick fix-it sort of job, since it takes only a couple seconds for it to be ready to go, but an iron, especially with a selection of tips, is a better tool for doing lots of soldering.  It dpends on what you're doing which is the better tool, but other than convenience, an iron will win out most of the time when it comes to quality work.