{"id":40022,"date":"2022-06-16T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=40022"},"modified":"2022-06-14T15:25:08","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T22:25:08","slug":"a-portable-soldering-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/a-portable-soldering-station\/","title":{"rendered":"A Portable Soldering Station"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t forget, I\u2019m now offering Unclassified ads at the bottom of this newsletter. Do you have a tool, newsletter, book, YT channel, product, service, etc. that you want to promote to other DIYers? Get your word out and support this publication at the same time.\u00a0Click here<\/a>\u00a0for details.<\/p>\n

A Portable Soldering Station<\/strong>
\n\"1\"
\nBecky Stern<\/strong>\u00a03D printed some wings<\/a>\u00a0for her\u00a0Aven soldering stand<\/a>. These fold up onto the sides of the otherwise hollow stand and allow her to store a\u00a0TS80P USB-powered soldering iron<\/a>, a spool of solder, and solder wick. The whole thing sits comfortably on top of her Tripp Lite high-capacity USB-C battery pack, making this a very handy and portable soldering station.<\/p>\n

Identifying Counterfeit Electronic Components<\/strong>
\n\"2\"
\nIn this excellent\u00a0GreatScott! video<\/a>,\u00a0Scott<\/strong>\u00a0looks at ways to examine your discrete electronic components to determine if they\u2019re cheap knock-offs or real as-marked. In the video, Scott examines and tests a collection of MOSFETs and OpAmps to determine their authenticity and performance. What he finds is that some counterfeits work within the specs of the original, some do not, and some are totally fake with nothing but an empty package.<\/p>\n

Vacuum Forming Bubble Wrap<\/strong>
\n\"3\"
\nBy way of\u00a0Donald Bell<\/strong>\u2019s\u00a0Maker Update<\/a>\u00a0comes this\u00a0unexpectedly cool use of bubble wrap<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 as material for vacuum forming. The resulting pattern\/texture is very interesting and not exactly what you might expect.<\/p>\n

Turn Your Phone Upside Down in Your Pocket<\/strong>
\nThis might be one for the D’uh Dept<\/em> files, but I thought it might be worth sharing. Recently, on a trip, my phone stopped charging. I noticed the power connector was not seating properly inside the jack on the phone. I figured it was dust inside and tried blowing it out, to no avail. After getting a paper clip from the front desk of the hotel, I was shocked to hog out a huge deposit of impacted pocket lint from the jack. Phone saved! For any of us carrying our phones in our pants pocket, this is bound to happen. Since then, I make sure my phone is upside down in my pocket.<\/p>\n

Handy Chart for Volume Conversions<\/strong>
\nFrom the highly-recommend Reddit sub,\u00a0CoolGuides<\/a>.
\n\"4\"<\/p>\n

Maker’s Muse<\/strong>
\n\u201cEvery tool that exists today, from hammers to particle accelerators, has been constructed with others tools, and those, with other tools, and so on, and eventually all tools where fabricated with rocks.\u201d \u2013 From\u00a0Wait But Why<\/em>\u2018s\u00a0Twitter feed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shop Talk<\/strong>
\n\"5\"
\n\u201cHi Gareth. I liked\u00a0the video about knives<\/a>. Seeing that it was part 2, I went and watched\u00a0part 1 first<\/a>\u2013\u2013Best knife brand?\u00a0Benchmade<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>($220),\u00a0Buck<\/a>\u00a0($60),\u00a0<\/a>Zero Tolerance<\/a>\u00a0($196),\u00a0Spyderco<\/a>\u00a0($62),\u00a0Cold Steel<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>($130),\u00a0<\/a>Kershaw<\/a>\u00a0($81),\u00a0SOG<\/a>\u00a0($55),\u00a0<\/a>CRKT<\/a>\u00a0($53),\u00a0Ontario<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>($35). I\u2019m glad I did. I have to say that the\u00a0best cheap knife<\/a>\u00a0from that video is MUCH better than the one from the 2nd video.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, Todd recommends the extremely affordable\u00a0<\/em>Smith & Wesson<\/em><\/a>, at only $13.<\/em><\/div>\n

Makes an Excellent Gift!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"6\"
\nFather\u2019s Day is coming up next weekend. You know what would make the perfect last-minute gift for that DIY Dad? A bundle of both volumes of my tips books. You can get them on Amazon here:\u00a0Volume 1<\/a>,\u00a0Volume 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales – Issue #124<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2371],"tags":[2372],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40059,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40022\/revisions\/40059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}