soldering set up

i need a soldering set up all i have no is a 30 watt pencil style soldering iron and the solder i have i got a few years at garage sale it looked very very old. so i looked iy up on goole and found out the company that made it went out of bussiness in 1915 so it is old lol.maybe it aint even solder well it says solder its 5 lbs on a roll but its very thick .so back to the point is the soldering iron ok for flashlight mods and what solder do i use.i know mine is way to old

Your solder could be acid core plumbing solder - definitely a no-no when it comes to electronics. A good, inexpensive solder for electronics is ye plain olde 60/40 (60% tin 40% lead) rosin core solder. You can find this stuff at Radio Shack or other electronic parts stores.

As for a soldering iron, there are a lot to choose from, so I'll let other CPFers chime in on this one.

Take a trip to Radio Shack. They sell new soldering irons if you need one for a pretty good price. They have a tube of silver-bearing, lead-free solder for less than $5.00.

I would really recommend this for your saftey, and ease of soldering. The holder makes it easy for you to put the soldering iron down, and not light the table on fire. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif It also has a spounge that you should wet before soldering, and that will help clean the tip and keep it in good condition. And beware of your soldering iron tip; if you don't take care of it, it will start to disappear!

do i need the flux stuff. o and my soldering iron is 30 watts and cheap i think i got it for a buck new lol. the solder i have says 43 64 b rosin spec at 7076 what ever that means

If your solder has a "rosin core", you should not need flux, because it's built right into the solder.

Chuck that solder from the garage sale in the trash, unless you want to save it for soldering copper pipe joints.

All but the cheapest, lowest quality electronics solder has rosin flux in the core. As far as I know, all Radio Shack solder is rosin core. This reduces the need to manually apply flux to your surfaces in preparation to solder, and I've never needed anything but just the flux built into the solder for most small projects.

People starting out with soldering should use a lower power iron, less than 20W. If you hold your iron on a circuit board trace too long with a higher power iron, you can damage the board by separating the trace. A more experienced solderer can use higher power units. I prefer to use 25-30W irons, but I have enough experience to work quickly, and know just when the surface is warm-enough to apply solder and have it melt/flow correctly. Also the smaller the parts being soldered, the lower the power should be. Shop for an iron with a grounded plug, this can reduce static discharge at the tip of the iron.

I have an old, junked Weller soldering station that I installed a plain power outlet on, along with 2 power switches. The first switch turns on/off power to the outlet, which I plug my iron into. The other switch is wired in series between the power switch and outlet, with a power diode soldered in parallel across the switch poles. When the switch is closed, the diode is shorted, and I have full power at the outlet for the iron. When the switch is open, the diode allows half the power to get to the outlet (half-wave rectifier), making a half-power setting for the soldering iron for small components.