Learning to Solder

 My Chateau electrical connections have been giving me lots of trouble - warm wall where the power source comes in, bulbs burning out quickly and then all the angles and tapewire connections on the roof sections. 

I fed tapewire up to the 3rd floor and to the angled ceilings in the kitchen and solarium. So there are lots of connections to potentially fail. I have 6 lights each in the kitchen and solarium, and my eyelet connections on the roof sections of these wings were tenuous, not to mention the extremely thin wire on some of these lights. A variety of vendors - Lighting Bug, NovaLyte and Ray Storey - use varying thicknesses of wire, making wrapping around eyelets a challenge. 

First purchase was a bust - I went with a Cir-Kit soldering iron and started a test board. It was extremely frustrating and I only got success on a horizontal surface. Yes, I watched videos and was getting nowhere fast. I was beginning to doubt my determination to learn soldering. 

I marched off to a big box store and got a real soldering iron - A Weller, it's got multiple bits - one being a chisel. That gave me purchase on a larger spot to heat up. This soldering iron has a wider ring around it, and an LED light. For me, the appeal was the wider section - provides a buffer between the hot tip and my hands/arms. The instance of my burning my hands dropped dramatically. 

My collection of soldering supplies and my test board house.

Here's one of my more successful soldered connections on my test house.

My dilemma with the warm wall, I think the wall thickness was one of the problems, it was thin. I think the electricity was connecting from the outside.

My fix was to remove the tapewire on the inside wall. 

Here's the roof of the Solarium - lots of eyelets and tape holding it all down. It will get covered by a strip of grey board. But still I don't want to trust this scotch tape. 

Here's the soldered connections. I got good at this once I found a way to strip the mylar off the top of the tapewire where my connection was going to be made. 

One of the chandelier soldered lights 

I even got good enough to do a vertical solder - this goes to the very top roof and will now be a secure connection.