On Tue, 23 Aug 2011 04:46:20 -0700 (PDT), Donovan Digital
wrote:

Thinking about picking up a cordless solder iron again - mostly for
audio cable work. Anyone have any suggestions? Weller or some other
brand? Gas or battery?

I'd really prefer battery. The smell of gas bothers me, so I hope
there's not really a significant power advantage to gas.

Thanks much in advance for any help

Joe

I have a 20+ year old Weller battery (two sub-C nicads) iron that has
had the batteries replaced several times. It still sees regular use
for a variety of things.

Tips are still available on Ebay and elsewhere (I bought several last
year). Some of the larger tips will do a good-sized joint (several
#16 wires on a lug). There are also some very small tips (I use one
for soldering SOIC 8 chips to SOIC-DIP adapters).

I did modify the charging stand. There's a resistor in series with
one of the charging leads, sized to provide enough voltage drop to
light a small LED when the iron is charging (if the iron isn't
straight in the stand, it doesn't make good contact for charging).
This also reduced the charging current to a level that makes it safe
to leave the iron on charge continuously.

I also added a dioed in series with the bulb that provides light to
the tip. It reduces the brightness a little, but it also reduces the
current the bulb uses - slightly increasing the number of connections
that can be made before the iron needs charging,
John