Wow. The worst thing I've done is put a small burn mark in my carpet (luckily my dad hasn't found it yet ).
I had one soldering iron burn out while modding my PS2. It simply stopped working. That was a negative experience, to say the least. My friend finished soldering one or two wires with the remaining heat and a lighter. I had to buy a second iron and it was sunday, so I had to isolate the work-area from my cats for a while. And the mod (surprise) didn't work... Now my friend is modding it again, and I'm stil waiting to hear from him. That was interesting, though.... There's little solder marks on my old table, too. My current soldering iron does work, though.
What kind was it? The Radioshack irons I've bought have worked wonders. I've had to buy two, since one became covered in plastic goo (that was three hours of hell).
The one I ruined look like it was from the 80's, and its my stepdads...well was. the thing thats not fair is he never uses them, and since I broke that one my mom got him one of the irons that are suppose to go from hot to cold instantly. He hasnt even taken it out of the package....are they any good?
I hear that they're absolutely horrible for electronics work. It has something to do with the tip vibrating very fast in order to heat up joints. I don't know the specifics of it, though, so you may be better off letting someone else answer.
So you get a piece of paper... like construction paperk, lay that down on the PCB where you're going to solder, then heat up the solder, attach and (attempt to) pull away the paper? Hmmm....interesting.
he he what I meant was use the paper as kind of shield to cover up the area of board so if you accidentally drop the solder it won't get stick on the board... I has bit of accident when I was installing enigmah prototype and had to spend longer to repair my error... so I thought grab a thick gauge paper and punch a small hole and cover the are where I work and it makes thing easier and also less change of error...
The cold heat ones are horrible, they send little electrical sparks basically through the tip from what i understand.
