In uk.d-i-y, Stephen Howard wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:09:04 +0100, Mike Barnes
wrote:

In uk.d-i-y, Stephen Howard wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:06:58 +0100, "tim....."
wrote:
And the mine boggles as to why I might want to wrap solder around the end of
a pencil.

To stop you from chewing it.
Plus, you always know where you can find a bit of solder when you need
it.

Simpler answers:

chewing the pencil - just don't do it
finding solder - it's where you left it

Most people don't have any problem with those things, AFAIK.

That's odd, I thought pencil-chewing was incredibly common - so much
so that it forms a colloquial expression for a difficult problem.

If you say so... first I've heard of it (the popularity of the habit,
and the colloquial expression, whatever it is).

--
Mike Barnes