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I was considering what I would do if the electricity went off and I needed to solder something.  I was on YouTube and I watched a guy make a battery operated soldering iron from copper wire, part of a telescoping antenna, wood, fiberglass sleeve tubing, some 0.2mm nichrome wire, and battery and holder. The video was speeded up so I would have to stop it very often to catch everything.

I went on eBay and Amazon and found 0.2mm nichrome wire and ordered a 10 m roll for a few dollars.  I then went looking for battery powered soldering irons and found several, which looked very similar and were probably all made by the same manufacturer in China.  The least expensive were all around $17.00 US.  Shockingly, though, some sellers were pricing it far lower, with ridiculously high shipping charge, adding up to even more.

I found a few soldering ‘torches’ that ran off butane or lighter fuel.  They weren’t cheap, but they don’t depend on any electricity.  Then I found several irons which plug into the USB port for power.  They are 5 volts and 8 watts, which comes to about 1.6 amps.  That’s more than a laptop port (1/2 amp) but can be powered from a power bank.  I read a few reviews while I was looking around, and found that many were not favorable.  Some adverts mentioned using the iron for soldering car wiring, but with 18 gauge or thicker wire, an 8 watt iron just doesn’t have enough heat to melt the solder.  It should work with 24 AWG and smaller and with small joints on PC boards, so I ordered 2 of the USB irons for less than 5 dollars each.

While I’m waiting for those to arrive (a few weeks from Hong Kong), I thought up another experiment.  I got two LEDs, solder, a 75 mm glass magnifying lens, and dark sunglasses.  I went outside and laid the LED leads on the concrete, in bright sunlight, and heated them with the lens, and finally got the solder to flow.  It took too long, the lens wasn’t getting it hot enough, fast enough.  The solder joint came out looking okay, but it could have been quicker and larger if the lens was larger.  I’m satisfied that my experiment was successful for the most part.

I have a plastic fresnel lens the size of a sheet of paper, which should have a lot more heat than the glass lens.  Long ago I noticed that it was much easier to burn the black letters than the white newspaper, so the shiny metal may be reflecting a lot of the heat.  And I really need darker sunglasses.  😎

I have a hundred watt monster soldering iron that runs of 28 volts, and it’s connected to a 28 volt DC power supply that plugs into the wall. I could power it from 2 car batteries in series. If I could get two car batteries — I have only one car. I suppose I could connect it to a single battery, but it would only be 25 watts, and it might not get hot enough to do the job. And it’s really too big for any electronic equipment.