It was somewhere outside Barstow when "AutoTracer"
wrote:

More likly you have either bunched up the glass wool inside the tip or it is
fouled with carbon (how? maybe you got flux inside or melted some plastic
for example).

Usual failure mode on cheap catalytic soldering irons is the
extra-thin catalyst mechanically falling off the glass wool. This
isn't fixable.

They'll sometimes clog with flux smoke if you've been working on
something particularly grubby. These may still work, but can be hard
to light (heating with another torch might get them going). Just
using these should be enough to burn off the crud.

The main difference is in the original build quality. The good ones
keep working, the cheap ones really don;t last 5 minutes.

--
Smert' spamionam