Question about soldering technique

[willhutch]

Here's a question arising from a silly problem I encountered last night..........

How on earth do you desolder heavy connections made to the bottom of a tone pot???? I was attempting to swap a tone pot with a push/pull pot. All was going fine......but.....I COULD NOT melt the solder that connected wires with the body of the pot. I pulled out my 100 Watt 'gun' and still couldn't do it.

Any solder that touched the tip would instantly vaporize. Small solder joints, like those running through the pot's terminals were melting like butter. But, MAN, I couldn't free the conections on the bottom of the pot. I'd like to preserve the wires, so I prefer not to cut unless absolutely needed.

So I ask - what's the trick??? Do they use special solder on those joint?

And an additional question: what's the best way to resolder onto a pot body? I've never gotten a connection that I felt was as nice as what came from the factory. It never seemed the solder wanted to stick on a flat surface (aluminum?) the way it will on the end of a wire or an eyelet terminal. Is there a trick to getting good heat transfer?

[HassanBinSober]

Boy, that sounds odd. If your iron is that hot, you should be able to push it right up to the wires that are soldered to the bottom of the pot and get the solder on the wires to losen up and come off, even if you don't full melt all of the solder on the back of the pot.

If your iron tip is pencil sharp then you are probably not transfering enough heat to the surface of the pot. You may need a different tip that has a flat edge in order to float the solder when you go to install the new pot.

[axepilot]

Tin the tip of the iron and apply flux to the joint you want to desolder. Work the iron tip into joint.

As far as resoldering the wires back onto the pot body, make sure the surface is clean and don't be bashful with the flux. Tin the iron's tip, heat the joint and apply solder. Done right, it should flow smoothly into a nice pretty blob. Clean the joint with alcohol to remove residual flux.

As my old MIL2000 soldering instructor would say in his finest Mississippi drawl, "Flux is yo friend."

[vroom]

I recently got a soldering GUN at Radio Shack for $10 just for pots. Much easier than trying to get a pencil iron to work for that purpose.

[vibroverbus]

Here's a question arising from a silly problem I encountered last night..........

How on earth do you desolder heavy connections made to the bottom of a tone pot???? I was attempting to swap a tone pot with a push/pull pot. All was going fine......but.....I COULD NOT melt the solder that connected wires with the body of the pot. I pulled out my 100 Watt 'gun' and still couldn't do it.

Any solder that touched the tip would instantly vaporize. Small solder joints, like those running through the pot's terminals were melting like butter. But, MAN, I couldn't free the conections on the bottom of the pot. I'd like to preserve the wires, so I prefer not to cut unless absolutely needed.

So I ask - what's the trick??? Do they use special solder on those joint?

And an additional question: what's the best way to resolder onto a pot body? I've never gotten a connection that I felt was as nice as what came from the factory. It never seemed the solder wanted to stick on a flat surface (aluminum?) the way it will on the end of a wire or an eyelet terminal. Is there a trick to getting good heat transfer?

solder comes in different hardnesses, could be that those were done at the factory with some harder blend. are you focusing on getting the underlying metal hot enough? I've seen guys try to heat just the top solder and they keep melting just a top layer while the pot sinks away the heat and never gets hot enough.

the reason you can't solder to a new pot is usually some degree of grease/lubricant/coating on the back. clean it as best you can, and you can even touch it with light abrasive (JUST LIGHTLY - not so much to create sanding dust that can get into the pot - scotch brite scrubby pad is perfect) - sometimes I'll just scrape it up with the sharp edge of a screwdriver. 100% agree with comments about flux all for the same reasons. same thing here as de-soldering - heat up the pot itself before you go trying to melt the solder on. otherwise if you haven't gotten the metal hot enough, you will just melt the solder & flux, and the solder will starts to oxidize (corrode) and becomes less and less inclined to 'stick'.

[Mike9]

As my old MIL2000 soldering instructor would say in his finest Mississippi drawl, "Flux is yo friend."

Why do I see Damon Wayans saying that????