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DrNomis_44
05-04-2016, 10:08 PM
After a suggestion by Dedman, I have decided to try and duplicate my Soldering mini-tutorial in this thread, in this forum section so it is easier to find.



Mini Soldering Tutorial


Thought I would include a mini-tutorial on Soldering in my STA-1M build diary for anyone who may be interested in improving their soldering skills, now if any of you are already good at soldering, feel perfectly free to humor me, this is mostly for all the newbies at guitar building, I'm going to show you how I was taught to solder while I was doing a Basic Electronics Course through TAFE at the Charles Darwin University here in Darwin in the mid 90's, I also want to add that I have been pursuing Electronics as a hobby since I was 13 years old, I'm now currently 46 years old....my goodness, time certainly flies doesn't it?


Anyway, when you go to do a soldered electrical-connection, there are at least two phases involved, preparation, and then the actual soldering.


Preparation:


When you go to do the preparation prior to soldering, you want to make sure that the two pieces of metal to be soldered are clean, this helps the hot molten solder to stick to, and flow onto the two surfaces to be soldered together, if the solder doesn't stick, or "take" to the surface of the metals this creates what is called a Dry Solder-Joint, this is bad because a Dry Solder-Joint creates a high-resistance electrical connection which can cause bad earthing problems, or can stop circuits from functioning normally like they're supposed to, or, loss of audio signals.


After the surfaces to be soldered are cleaned, there are a further four phases to the preparation prior to the actual soldering, they are:


1, Cut.......Cutting a piece of plastic-insulated wire to length, remembering that it is easier to shorten a wire than to lengthen it, so maybe cut it a bit longer than it needs to be.

2, Strip......Strip a short length of plastic insulation off the end of the wire, for a piece of wire that's going to be soldered to a solder-lug on a pot you can strip off about 4 to 5mm of the insulation, which should be enough.

3, Twist......Some pieces of wire will contain lots of small strands of copper-wire bundled together inside the plastic insulation, what you want to do prior to soldering is to twist the strands together to form a single neat strand, try and twist the wires all together in the same direction.

4, Tin.....To "Tin" the single bundle of twisted copper-strands means to coat the bundle with Solder, this is done to ensure a good solder-joint that is Electrically strong.


I will be posting some pics shortly to illustrate each of the four phases more clearly.


Okay here are some pics to illustrate the four soldering-preparation phases:


Cut:


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I used my wire stripping-tool to cut the piece of wire to the required length.



Strip:


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I then used my wire-stripping tool to strip about 5mm of plastic insulation off the end of the wire, making sure I didn't completely remove it, then I used the excess insulation to neatly twist the small copper strands together to form one single strand.


Twist:


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You can see in the pic how the twisted copper-strands have twisted together neatly, this is what it should look like with no fraying, it should look like a single strand of copper wire.


Finally we come to the Tin-phase:


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When you go to tin the wire, first wipe the tip of the soldering-iron on the damp cleaning-sponge, or a damp cotton rag after applying some solder to the tip, this tins the soldering iron tip so it can heat the joint to be soldered more efficiently, when you actually go to tin the wire, use the tip of the soldering iron to heat the copper strands and then apply the solder to both the soldering iron tip and the copper strands, don't apply the solder to the iron tip and use it to transfer the solder to the copper strand because the flux in the solder will have gone up in smoke and won't be able to do it's job.


The job of the flux inside the standard 60/40 Electronic Solder is to boil-off any dirt, grease, and oxidation contaminating the surfaces of the metals to be soldered, if the Flux goes up in smoke before it can do it's job, this could potentially create a dry solder-joint.

DrNomis_44
05-04-2016, 10:15 PM
This last pic shows what the tinned wire should look like:


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The tinned wire-end should look like the above pic, nice and shiny-silver.



Note that some of the pics may be a bit blurry, I really need to find out if my Nikon A100 Camera has a Macro function and learn how to use it.

kimball492
06-04-2016, 06:53 AM
Doc I'm sure lots of the people using the site will appreciate the time and effort you put in here. Well done and for Newbies an important read.

DrNomis_44
06-04-2016, 07:09 AM
Doc I'm sure lots of the people using the site will appreciate the time and effort you put in here. Well done and for Newbies an important read.



Cheers mate, I actually enjoy doing these little tutorials, if they prove useful and helpful to other members then that's a bonus.


I might even see if I can do a mini-tutorial on how to use a Digital Multimeter if anyone is interested in me doing one.

dingobass
06-04-2016, 07:44 AM
I moved this thread here because this is where it belongs :)

Thanks Doc, it is a beaut!

DrNomis_44
06-04-2016, 08:06 AM
I moved this thread here because this is where it belongs :)

Thanks Doc, it is a beaut!



No worries at all mate, and cheers for moving it to a more appropriate forum section, when I started it I was unsure where the thread was supposed to be put.

Dedman
06-04-2016, 08:35 AM
yea, defiantly up for a multi meter tute. I have a rather big multi-meter but only under stand about 2 of its functions.

wokkaboy
06-04-2016, 09:27 AM
good mini tutorial Doc, maybe next time try and get some of the photos are badly out of focus

DrNomis_44
06-04-2016, 09:31 AM
good mini tutorial Doc, maybe next time try and get some of the photos are badly out of focus


I agree, there were some focusing issues with some of the pics, my camera may have a Macro function on it that might help get more in-focus pics, some of those pics required me to hold the camera in my left-hand and I'm right-handed, which didn't help things much, I kept accidentally pressing the on/off button instead of the button to actually take the pic.

wokkaboy
06-04-2016, 09:38 AM
no drama Doc, yes it's awkward if you are holding something with one hand and taking pics with your non preferred hand, we get the drift

peterh
06-04-2016, 09:42 AM
Being a complete newbie at soldering electronics, is there any difference in how you do the soldering if you're using braided sheath wire like this - http://www.pitbullguitars.com/shop/upgrades/all-parts-vintage-cloth-wire-with-braided-shield-500mm/?

DrNomis_44
06-04-2016, 09:49 AM
Being a complete newbie at soldering electronics, is there any difference in how you do the soldering if you're using braided sheath wire like this - http://www.pitbullguitars.com/shop/upgrades/all-parts-vintage-cloth-wire-with-braided-shield-500mm/?


There's not a whole lot of difference when it comes to soldering vintage braided wire like that, except for the preparation prior to soldering, I happen to have a short piece of wire like that and I can easily do a few pics to show how to prepare it for soldering, will post the pics shortly so stay tuned.


Here's how I prepared a piece of vintage braid-shielded cloth-wire I used for the output-jack in my Strat build ( I'm using a short leftover piece for this):



I started off by cutting the wire to length:


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Next I held the wire between my thumb and index finger about 13mm from the end of the wire , and carefully pushed the braid back till the inner-wire was exposed:


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After doing that, I used the tip of a multimeter probe to carefully poke a hole in the braid:


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Next I bent the wire back on itself where the hole in the braid was:


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After doing that, I used the multimeter probe to enlarge the hole in the braid, and then I pulled the inner wire through the hole in the braid:


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DrNomis_44
06-04-2016, 10:37 AM
After doing that I pushed back the inner-wire cloth insulation to expose the inner-wire:


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And then I put the wire in a holding device called a Third-Hand, and tinned the exposed inner-wire and the braid:


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Next, I cut two short pieces of heatshrink tubing, I slipped one of the pieces of heatshrink over the wire and the other piece over the braid, then I used the tip of my soldering iron to shrink the tubing on the braid, after I did that, I slid the other piece of heatshrink-tubing into place and used my iron to shrink it, I ended up with a neat looking piece of shielded wire:


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peterh
06-04-2016, 08:04 PM
Thanks Doc! very helpful.

Fellowsoldier
08-12-2016, 07:57 AM
Doc, thank you for this post. My son and I are building his EX-5 bass and when it comes to wiring and soldering we're both new and uneducated about it. Having access to your years of experience is invaluable to us, so thank you for that.

DrNomis_44
08-12-2016, 12:28 PM
Doc, thank you for this post. My son and I are building his EX-5 bass and when it comes to wiring and soldering we're both new and uneducated about it. Having access to your years of experience is invaluable to us, so thank you for that.


No worries at all mate, learning how to solder is a bit like learning how to ride a bike, it takes a bit of practice but eventually you do get good at it.

SoloHin
04-07-2019, 03:41 PM
interesting!

FCD
04-07-2019, 05:16 PM
Huge thank you for this - I haven’t received my kit yet (awaiting delivery) and I will be referring back to this for sure. As with everything else with this build I am a complete newbie and need to learn everything from scratch

rokitrik
05-07-2019, 12:39 AM
This is great Doc! Thanks for posting and sharing this info! I really need it.

Cheers,
rokit

A-Zed
05-07-2019, 05:11 AM
It’s been at least 20 years since I last did any serious soldering as I am a desk jockey and back then it was telephone wiring that I did so not really delicate stuff.

This is a SSS pickguard which is going into my first ever rebuild. I wanted to do something that was cost effective and gave me practice before I tackle something more complex.

So Wilkinson pickups, CTS pots and a Switchcraft 5 way.

Thanks for the tute. It reaffirmed my assumptions in soldering technique. It still looks like a duck had a go on the earth points though.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190704/a55fdc0703d9ad68f39dea694d7e830f.jpg