Mr. Fix-it I'm not

I posted a slightly more incriminating detailed description of this on a mailing list a while back. I just decided to inflict it on those of you who weren't victimized the first time around. When my son was about five, I undertook to build a small model train layout with him. This partially explains why the job never really got finished:

I have followed dozens of tips and tricks to make my soldering look even remotely like what they say it should look like. I just can't make it work. "Tin the work first", they say, so I tin it . . . except that when they show a photo of a tinned piece, it looks as if it's just got a microscopically thin coating of really, really shiny solder on it. When I "tin" something, it looks more like I took a tin can and wrapped it around the work piece. All gnarled and grey-black and totally not like the photo. Not to mention being twice the size of the "un-tinned" original piece.

So careful application of heat is the key, they say. I carefully apply heat to a freshly cleaned piece of rail. About a second after I get the iron in contact with the metal, the ties go all Salvador Dali and I'm breathing in really fascinating fumes.

Okay, maybe I'm using too large a soldering iron. I switch to a much smaller iron. Now, when I touch the rail, nothing happens for like 30 seconds or so. The solder at the tip of the iron briefly turns shiny, then jumps off the tip of the iron and lands on the plastic tie instead of the rail.

Flux, they say, flux is the key. Okay, I get myself some flux. Now, I don't get a huge blob of solder. Now I get a huge sheet of solder stretching far beyond the area I'm trying to work on. Flux works too well, if you ask me! Instead of making the solder joint easier to make, it converts the melted metal into a science fiction amoeba-like creature, trying to escape . . .

And don't even get me started about how many bloody hands are necessary to hold a soldering iron, solder, wire, flux applicator, fire extinguisher, first aid kit, emergency beer glass, other emergency beer glass, etc. I'm certain that the magazine authors actually have this all done by Industrial Light and Magic with a 50-person FX team filming against a blue screen, because I sure can't reproduce what they show as just a simple task!

Grumpy? I get grumpy just thinking about soldering! Five minutes after I start trying to do it, I'm all the way out to Apoplectic!