"rangerssuck" wrote in message
...
My trusty Portasol has, apparently, given up the ghost. I don't use it
very often, but when I need it (as I did yesterday), I expect it to work.
Yesterday it did not. I filled it with butane, turned it on, and no gas
flowed. The on/off switch feels kind of funky, and I suppose that after
the 20 or so years that I've had it, I can't complain.

So, today I went looking at Amazon, ebay, home depot, etc, and it seems
like there's a pretty huge array, some good reviews and some horrible
reviews for each of them.

I don't want to spend a LOT of money, but I don't want to but crap,
either. Any suggestions would be welcome.


I've got a couple butane soldering irons. They work ok, but recently I had
to do a repair on an alarm panel (fusible link was blown) and didn't have
one in the truck. Rather than a 45 minute trip (one way) back to the shop I
stopped by a local Radio Shack and found one that operates on a couple AA
batteries. Along with it I picked up a small roll of light (thin) rosin
core solder. I also bought a pack of batteries to go in it, as I didn't
expect them to last long. That soldering iron has seen half a dozen uses in
the field now, and at the moment it sitting on my work bench because I just
used to to make up some battery packs. It still has the first set of
batteries in it. The pack I bought has come in handy, but so far not for
that iron.

I would not use it to try and solder a T-tap in 12 ga electrical wire, but
it does a great job for fine soldering of 22ga stuff, circuit boards, etc
and its great in close quarters were I am not 100% certain of the
flammability of the surrounding dust and the glow of a butane iron makes me
nervous.

I don't know what its life actually is because I don't normally use it on
the bench, but I've had it for over a year. Normally it rides around in my
tool pouch in the truck.




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