Best portable sodering iron / pencil

[shaeff]

Usually pay less then $20 at the Ham Radio swap meets, nobody knows or wants to learn how to solder any more they all want to plug and play and are essentially appliance operators now. I make all my cables for radio use and I solder everything that is outside and heat shrink it. David

For that price, I'd buy one for sure! Yeah, it's a shame what the appliance industry has turned into. :/

From my limited experience with other people's soldered connections, it seems like most use too much heat, burn back the insulation, and wick the solder up past/under the insulation. There's a delicate balance that many seem to miss.

 

[3Lfarms]

Looks like a sweet iron. But for that price tag, I'll stick with my $25 RadioShack unit. It has yet to fail me, and has done all I needed it to. If I needed it to make a living, I'd invest in a PyroPen.

Besides, I mostly make crimps out "in the field," good self sealing crimp connectors are pretty awesome.

I have that same butane pencil iron/heat gun except is marked as Blue Point brand from the Snap On catalogue. Works great and I usually grab it over the big electric Weller gun.