Soldering Tutorial

Soldering is an essential skill that is needed for building a tube amplifier. It can be very frustrating with the wrong equipment so I will give a list of equipment which you should have with you when building this tube amplifier.

Equipment	Approx. Price	Comments
Soldering Iron (Over 100 Watts)	$35-$200	The guns are usually better for bigger projects (such as tube amplifier projects)
Soldering Tips	$10	You will usually wear down the soldering tips, so replacements are great to have around
Solder	$5-$10	Get the kind with flux in the core, flux gives better soldering connections
Soldering Braid	$5	This is used to suck up any solder that you messed up on, this is usually the hardest to find. It's not necessary but very useful.

Error Prevention and Correction (Don't skip this!)

Always heat up the solder area very well. You need to be patient with this or you will get a cold-solder.
A cold-solder happens when you solder you applied isn't really 'attached' to the right areas.
Cold-solders tend to create crackling sounds in your amplifiers or stop creation of sound.
To heal a cold-solder apply heat again with your soldering iron, be very patient this time because it takes longer to heat up now that your heating up both solder and the area

The Soldering Process

Arrange your connection points so that that can be in place without you holding them there. This is important because I have burnt my fingertips plenty of times trying to put a wire back in place that was too hot. Warning, don't feel safe touching a wire that is being heated up because it has the insulation on it, the heat does go through the insulation.
Turn on your soldering iron and place in the area to be soldered, wait until it heats up well. You have to wait longer when there are larger amounts of metal to heat up (for example connecting a wire to a turret vs. connecting two wires).
Once you have it hot enough use your free hand to stick the solder in. Don't put too much in there!
Don't move away the soldering iron until you have seen the solder flow and attach the connection points.

Desoldering

Heat up the solder and area, wait until the solder is a hot liquid. Now stick the soldering braid in, the solder should stick to it. Expirement with this, hopefully you shouldn't have to get too good at it.

Cleaning your Soldering Tip

Use some sandpaper and scrape off the black stuff (carbon) on the tip. This carbon block the heat conduction just like a glove mit blocks heat from hurting your hand when you touch a hot pan, only to a lesser degree. This also creates betters soldered connections because you don't get any carbon in the solder