Hi all
Just recently bought a new cheap soldering / rework station to try and up my seriously lacking soldering skills (my previous iron has two settings: off and nuclear).
Being cack-handed / southpaw i tend to use the iron in my left hand and solder / tweezers in my useless right hand but I'm starting to think maybe I should reverse it and use my dominant hand for adding solder / parts but worry my right hand will end up stabbing something it shouldn't.
How do you all tackle soldering? What hand do you hold the iron in?
I respect everyone is different but interested to see what people do and their reasoning behind it
Cheers 👍🏻
Just recently bought a new cheap soldering / rework station to try and up my seriously lacking soldering skills (my previous iron has two settings: off and nuclear).
Being cack-handed / southpaw i tend to use the iron in my left hand and solder / tweezers in my useless right hand but I'm starting to think maybe I should reverse it and use my dominant hand for adding solder / parts but worry my right hand will end up stabbing something it shouldn't.
How do you all tackle soldering? What hand do you hold the iron in?
I respect everyone is different but interested to see what people do and their reasoning behind it
Cheers 👍🏻
Iron in the dominant hand. I find the other hand will come to the party.
The business end of the iron is the important thing to be able to control, from safety perspective. I use iron in dominant hand, its like a pen. But I can see the difficulty, dexterity is needed in both hands.
Fortunately surface mount soldering only needs one good hand (for hand pick&place), the rest happens in an oven.
For air-rework stations some come with a stand to hold the gun over the PCB, so again only one good hand is needed for that.
Fortunately surface mount soldering only needs one good hand (for hand pick&place), the rest happens in an oven.
For air-rework stations some come with a stand to hold the gun over the PCB, so again only one good hand is needed for that.
I'm weird in that I'm a southpaw for writing and eating, but right handed for most everything else - throw, bat, using scissors, etc. I've always held the iron in my left hand and the solder/tweezer/pick in my right. Maybe get some kits that will entail repetitive use of the iron and solder and get a bunch of practice? Think of it like weldor running practice beads to get the hang of wielding a torch and adding filler rod.
-Pat
-Pat
@Cubdriver I'm similar, except I only write with my left hand. I use utensils and do everything else with my right hand. That said, I also hold my iron in my left hand. I have better fine motor control in my right hand, so that's used for placing/holding parts with tweezers and feeding solder. Being left handed but right eye dominant is a mess.
Agree fully with practicing to help. I have my iron in dominant hand, and feed solder (or hold parts) with other hand. I also rotate and/or tilt the target to help me with angle of approach with the iron's tip. Further, I will sometimes brace my iron hand (like a tripod) to prevent wiggle wobble...
Through hole - Get some cheap perforated board and some headers to practice until you get a groove going is my suggestion.
Through hole - Get some cheap perforated board and some headers to practice until you get a groove going is my suggestion.
LOL - I'm left eye dominant (astigmatism in my right eye) - great fun when shooting with cameras (viewfinders tend to be biased to the left side) or rifles (face mashed against stock to line good eye up with sights).
-Pat
Yeah, I guess I'm lucky that I'm not fully left handed, since we live in a right handed world. My mother bought me a calligraphy set for Christmas when I was 9. That was a heartbreaking disaster.
Yup - my writing has always been horrific. Always tell people I missed my calling - should have been a doctor - already have the handwriting for it! I got a calligraphy set in HS - I could do it, but it was slow as I had to be really careful and/or wait for the ink to dry. The bought me leftie scissors and baseball gloves as a kid, but I just naturally gravitated to using those things right handed. I guess I'm just wired weird. It does somewhat help with using tools, as I tend to be pretty ambidextrous with screwdrivers and pliers and whatnot, defaulting to whichever hand has better access to whatever I'm working on.
I shoot left in hockey. Bat right in baseball. Catch left both as a hockey goaltender and in baseball. Technically right-hand dominant, though I'm pretty ambidextrous in many cases. I can turn a screwdriver with my left hand without thinking much about it. I can't write legibly with either hand though I use my right hand for that. Anyway...
Definitely use your dominant hand for the iron. Feed the solder with your non-dominant hand. It often helps to unspool, say, a metre of solder and coil it up around two fingers. That gives you a tight little coil that is easy to hold in the palm of your hand or between the thumb and your index finger. That makes it easier to feed the solder.
An interesting tidbit of information: Left-hand dominant folks tend to have a better recovery after a stroke. The thinking is that their two brain hemispheres are more interconnected because they are forced to use their non-dominant hand in this right-hand dominant world. So there is that. 🙂
Tom
Definitely use your dominant hand for the iron. Feed the solder with your non-dominant hand. It often helps to unspool, say, a metre of solder and coil it up around two fingers. That gives you a tight little coil that is easy to hold in the palm of your hand or between the thumb and your index finger. That makes it easier to feed the solder.
An interesting tidbit of information: Left-hand dominant folks tend to have a better recovery after a stroke. The thinking is that their two brain hemispheres are more interconnected because they are forced to use their non-dominant hand in this right-hand dominant world. So there is that. 🙂
Tom
I am left handed. Wouldn't hold the iron in anything but the dominant hand. Heat is where the focus should be. The solder will follow.
-tom
-tom