soldering tips for glorious beauty and great justice

• when putting the iron back in the holder, tin the tip, do not clean it; you want to leave a layer of solder on the tip

• when removing the iron from the holder, clean the tip on a brass wool "sponge", then re-tin it before applying it to the work - do not use stainless steel kitchen scrubbers

• never use wet sponges, this drastically shortens tip life

• never use solder-and-flux "tip cleaners" - the flux is ALWAYS nasty even in name brands - they will shorten your tip life

• never EVER use sal ammoniac cakes to tin a badly oxidized tip - you will condemn that tip to an early death - just get physical with the brass wool; use stabbing and twisting motions. 

The stabbing motions are very satisfying,
you can pretend the brass wool is someone you don't like

• replace factory tips with aftermarket higher-quality tips (Plato, Hakko, etc) which will last longer and sometimes even perform better than OEM, for the same money

• use name brand solder; Kester, Alpha Metals, AIM, Multicore (now part of Henkel/Loctite), Stannol

• use a 'eutectic' alloy, this helps with every kind of soldering, because eutectic alloys have no plastic, in-between state, they are either liquid or solid, so the joint is less likely to move at just the wrong moment as it cools

• buy solder wick and a solder sucker - you may not need them as often if you are doing non-electronic work, but they come in handy sometimes

• make sure your iron has some form of temperature regulation- this need not be a fancy station with a digital display - there are regulated "pencil" irons too

• make sure your iron has enough wattage for the size of material you want to solder;

- 25 watts regulated should be enough for basic electronics
- 35 or 50 watts for wire-frame modeling with thin brass wire or soldering thick wire into heavy duty plated-thru holes in thick PCBs
- 75 watts or more if you're doing stained glass

  How do you know if you have enough?  You should thoroughly test your first purchase immediately and return it (tip clean of course, so it doesn't look used) if it hasn't got enough oomph.  If it's taking forever to heat joints to solder-melting temp, you either need to wet your tip more (dry tips conduct heat into the work poorly) or maybe you actually need a hotter iron.  If making your second iron purchase, consider getting one with adjustable temperature.