Hi my dear friends! I haven’t seen you for a whole year. Frankly speaking, I missed you so much, as well I missed the handmade crafts. As you might have noticed we are going to work on this nice background stand. We are going to use different tools. We will cut, file, stick on this white table. Well, I guess, you’ll be excited. I don’t feel like bothering you and myself as well be the first video in 2015 year, so in this video I’ll just show you how I upgrade the cheapest Chinese solderers bought from aliexpress for $4-5. So let’s start. I’ll give you some tips on improvements I make, which lead to the result very close to professional solderers. The first disadvantage of a cheap Chinese solderer is a sting. There is an inscription on the box that it’s a default sting, but indeed it’s a kind of iron or stainless sting, which isn’t appropriate for soldering, even if you use it the same way as a default one. So we need such a copper wire.

You may buy a thin wire separately, then remove the isolation from it, or buy a separate copper sting. We take a screw key, remove this small bolt

remove a metal sting and insert a copper wire, leave one centimeter of wire outside and screw the bolt.

You might notice that sting substitution takes a little time. Then, we need to shape the sting, which can be chosen by yourself. Personally, I prefer the sting of a pike shape. We need a borer to shape the copper wire.

After boring you might notice some sharp edges, so we take a file and even the inequalities.

You might notice that I don’t sharpen the sting too much as it’s going to burn down anyway, so you shouldn’t sharpen it too much. The sting is ready, we just need to tin it. We move to the next upgrade of solderer. Put everything in it’s place. The next go wire and plug. If you have the cheapest solderer, the wire is very bad.

The isolation breaks soon, wire strips, it can lead to electric shock as the wire is striped. The same is plug in, it’s no good at all. It’s quite an easily to change the wire you need just remove a nickel-chromium wire.

Then we need to untie the knot, remove the isolation, and untwist. I like that in order to change a nickel-chromium wire you just need to buy another cheap Chinese solderer. As for more expensive ones you’ll buy a wire or so called ten at $5-10 price. Otherwise, you buy one more solderer and receive besides wire one more sting, though it’s not good, but at least you get a wooden handle. I’d also like to recommend you when choosing between two types of solderers – with a wooden handle and with a plastic one, not to choose a plastic handle, because a metal part and sting heat, then a metal part melt the plastic handle. That causes instability of the handle, so you can’t work carefully. That is one more tip. Remove this wire, it’s not necessary any more, I don’t know where else to use it, perhaps in a radio, which consumes little electricity. Then take a cable of a length you need, take nippers, bite it. I think 70 cm will be enough. Done. Remove the isolation and begin to tie wire by wire, bite it.

Here there are teflon pipes, if I’m not mistaken. Isolate it properly. Then take the second wire and twist it too. We are almost done it. Insert it into the handle. We need to wrap some electrical tape in here not to tear the wire. You can make a knot, but this cable is too thick and knot won’t fit the hole.

Then, press it into the wooden handle, you can push it deeper, the solderer will be shorter and it will be more convenient to work with it. It’s important not to push it too deep not to hide the holes for cooling. I think that will do. Look, how short solderer is, it’s very convenient to work with it. Look at the simple solderer I used before. It’s longer than that one.

We have inserted it deeper and got a shorter solderer which is more convenient. We have to remove isolation at this end too. Take a screw key and connect these two wires to the plug. Then twist it.

Well done. Look guys, solderer looks different, and it’s quite nice.

By the way, it’s a solderer for 40 watt, as for me it’s enough power, I don’t need more or less power. What else can we change here? Actually, no other changes can be made, and they are not needed. Because solderer consists of a sting, a heating element, a metal body with the cooling holes, a handle, a cable and a plug. However, an original expensive solderer for $100 or more, like dremel, gas or electrical solderers are very expensive. But when you look at them closely, you don’t understand why you have to pay such an amount of money for them, so if you like this small transformation – press like, write your comments concerning this upgrade, I’ll definitely read them. I hope that there would be good feedback.
Now we just need to tin the sting and test this solderer. Plug it in a socket. Put it on our handmade holder made in 2014. Then take flux that once was as a prize in a contest, I’ve told you that I use the same flux, and a tin metal. To tin the sting I take a flux, an ear stick, apply a few drops.

Put the sting and melt the tin metal.

To tin the sting I take a flux, an ear stick, apply a few drops. Put the sting and melt the tin metal. Turn it around a bit. I’ve got such a metal sponge. Wipe it

then coat it with the soldering flux again.

It lies very good. So you should buy such a metal sponge too and wipe the sting of a solderer from time to time to avoid a soot deposit.

Well guys, you might see that everything is great, it’s good for me. So press like, leave comments, I hope you liked this video. See you in the next video. Bye-bye!

Do you know?
In the times of USSR there was a special heading for the solderer sting, which enabled to cut and solder weld plastic materials such as polythene film.