WKW wrote:

I have two old soldering stations with burned out elements I want to
rewind. ( One is an old ungar they quit making ages ago but it was a good
iron ) I found some #30 Nikrothal 80-20 wire cheap on eBay which appears to
be the same length and resistance as the original. I just want to know what
kind of paint or insulating material to use to keep the wire from shorting
to the metal barrel or to neighboring turns ( They are both 24 volt
transformer units ). I took one elemant apart already and the coil is
sandwiched between to metal tubes about .02" apart.

I am sure that you will receive replies from folks considerably more familiar
with heater construction than myself, but FWIW, please see how I worked with
soldering iron heaters to build an SMT hot air rework tool at:

http://www.cybertheque.org/homebrew/smt-rework-tool

I found that windings separated by ceramic spacers was typical in units
that I disassembled and I used refractory cement in my finished unit to
provide structural strength and thermal conductivity and thermal insulation
in appropriate places.

Michael