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Max, I forget the exact model number, but I also have an Ungar soldering iron. The last time I stocked up on tips they were a little bit loose so I just put a shim of .005" brass on the half round side.Did your element burn out?Once I dropped my base on the floor and broke a joint inside. Had to solder it back together with a lighter till it started working. Then I re-soldered it with itself
Regarding that Radio Shack tip cleaner and tinner compound...I looked at stuff in a store the other day. The sales rep said they don't know if it's good anymore becausewhen you take the cover off the jar, it is a hard gray mass in there. She expected it to bemore like a paste.So did I.To those of you who have used it, is that right? Should it be a hard gray stuff? I am guessing that you wipethe hot iron on it and it cleans, and also melts and coats the tip. Should it be hard or gooey?Thanks
The tip cleaner/conditioner that I have is hard. It softens with heat and has solder mixed in the paste to help pre-tin a new tip.
Here's a word of caution. Etch these words into your soldering brain.Although flux is great for soldering joints and some electrical contacts, as model builders it's important for those joints to last a long time. Certain fluxes can really make the solder flow and stick, but in the long run, they will cause your joint to self-destruct over a time period of a few months to a few years.These fluxes are highly acid and are available easily at your local The Home Depot's or Lowe's and are designed for soldering stuff like copper pipe for your toilets and bear such names as "Plumber's Honey" and work great for soldering pipes using a big-ol' Propane torch when building your house.Way back when, when I was learning to build N-scale turnouts so I could use Railcraft Code 70 flex on my Ntrak modules (as a compromise between scale appearance and Ntrak's requirement to use code 80 track), I discovered highly acidic flux works GREAT for making solder flow! I also realized that this flux was highly acidic, so I washed my bench-made turnouts in warm, soapy water and got rid of all the visible signs of it. After two years of being painted and ballasted, every single turnout I had built started disintegrating with even the plastic Delrin ties going brittle and white. This caused me to scrap three extensive modules after five years of attempting to fix the problem by resoldering all of the joints on my PCB turnouts as they broke.After that horror story, I was introduced to a brand of flux that a manufacturer of N-scale catenary was using to construct his models, and that discovery rocked my soldering world just like Max's discovery of plain ol' flux. Two reasons...it works better than Plumber's Honey and its slight acidity is neutralized by the heat of soldering. Since those days 25 years ago, all of my brass and NS model building has been done using this brand of flux, and turnouts and models I made that long ago have not exhibited a single moment of self-destructive behavior!So, make sure the flux you choose is either non-acidic, or that it self-neutralizes or you'll be sorry down the road, believe me.