So my favorite woman had the 4-wire plug on her trailer get 'dragged' on the road into non-working pieces. I volunteered to fix it if I could teach her how to solder. She got the plug parts and we had a teaching date: Cut the ground wire a different length than the signal lines avoid shorting the signals to ground. Showed how to use hardware store quality, wire strippers. Showed an outer bundle, heat shrink and slipped over the wires. Soldering pen plug-in and damp hand cloth. You can wipe on cotton jeans but synthetics will melt and burn you badly. Strip wire insulation about 1/2 inch and slide smaller heat shrink on wire away from copper. Finger twist, one pairs of copper wires matching color insulations to hold together. Wipe soldering iron on damp wash cloth to see shiny and melt a small dot of solder for heat transfer. Heat the copper and melt the solder into the wires. Don't worry about insulation melt. Small solder balls are a useless 'cold solder joint'. The solder must melt into the wire. Inspect to see solder is uniform in the wire mesh holding the wires together. PULL test ... no really pull. Much easier to fix it now. Slide the heat shrink over the solder joint. Use the base of the solder pen on the heat shrink. 'Some plastic smoke is normal but stinks.' Repeat for all wires. Slide outer bundle heat shrink to cover all wire joints. Use tie-wraps so the connector can't drag on the road and clip the eye poking ends. It ain't roses but now she has a new skill. Bob Wilson
Everyone should know how to solder! Once upon a long time ago, I was able to populate boards with the best of them. I still have a well-worn but well-maintained Weller in my office at work and on a desk at home. Interestingly enough the last time I repaired a trailer harness that was chewed up by my sweet baby girl's not so sweet boxer, I crimped them to save time, money and wire. I anticipate that this repair will fail me at a very inopportune time , but life is short, and I KNOW HOW to crimp wires so that they stay crimped, how to use strain reliefs, and ways to make the repair fairly weather resistant. ---and my days of playing in the big salt are hopefully getting smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror!
Soldering can be fun ... but when Kenwood in its infinite wisdom decides to solder a minute green cartridge fuse right onto a circuit board - & it's already taken an hour - fishing around - continuity probing - just to eventually find what component died? .... teeny 5amp green cartrige fuse w/ a LONG pigtail on one side while the other is literally soldered under the varnish with NO pigtail? Yuck ... 68yr old eyes ... shaky sausage fingers ... sheesh ... the crazy things we attempt in order to salvage (even used, still worth) a $1,000 'toy' (an hf - vhf - uhf - microwave transceiver - please Lord don't let me burn up this board)
Over 15 years ago, a nearby lightning strike, EMI took out our 27" CRT color TV that was cable TV connected. So I opened it up and found a paper schematic inside. No circuit board fuse but some cheap parts (Radio Shack?), ohmed it out, and got the power supply working. But the tuner was FUBAR. Another time, I had a circuit board, soldered fuse in a first generation PowerBook go out. But that was an easy repair. The only way we can afford to fix 'em ourselves is curiosity. So I have an outdated Tesla charge port controller: Instead of connectors on the board, the connector shells are in the plastic case with holes for the pins. The pins are soldered to the board. The board is partially, conformal coated. Sandy Munro was impressed by the aerospace grade electronics in the Tesla. I am too! Bob Wilson
I had a moment kind of like that, and I guess you wouldn't be all wrong to call her sort of a favorite of mine, only just watch how you say it, 'cause she was 13 at the time. Her family needed a monitor for their computer, and we had one at $work that was in the ship-to-e-recycling pile 'cause it wouldn't turn on, so I gave them that one. To the 13 year old, I gave small hand tools, a soldering iron and stand, solder, desoldering braid, a few practice soldering sessions, and the 60-cent SMPS DIP that was usually the culprit when those old Dells wouldn't power on. And when she was done and powered it on, I took the obligatory sappy-geezer pic (redacted here so you don't see her eyes rolling). Another vice I tried exposing her to was singing, but she just parlayed that into three years in her high school's top choir like it was respectable or something. Well, I tried. I tried. What she's doing career-wise now seems to involve no soldering or singing, but I'm glad both of those happened. Still gotta think of a gift for her upcoming wedding. Not leaning toward solder; she's probably got enough left on the original roll. Nothing against teaching new skills to people my own age, but the more time marches along, the more that seems subject to diminishing expected returns....
