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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

One of the problems I’ve identified with me not getting around to practicing soldering as frequently as I like is due to lack of protective equipment. Can I practice soldering late at night? What if I make a mistake and burn myself? By far, I must admit that my two greatest concerns with soldering are the fumes and the potential to burn my hands on the soldering iron. Also, reading around, some people always recommend you wear a respirator while soldering, so why not?

Okay, now what about the gloves. What kinds of gloves should you wear when doing soldering? First of all, many people do not recommend wearing gloves due to the lost dexterity. Fair enough, but if you are a novice at soldering, you don’t have much dexterity to begin with, so that’s not really something to worry about. Of course experts are much less likely to burn themself on soldering, even if they are doing it late at night. But, anyways, for those who do prefer to wear gloves, they recommend wearing “welding gloves.” They are very comfortable, and they will stand up to the heat if you accidentally touch the tip of your soldering iron. Your main concern with gloves is that they must be sufficiently heat resistant, because having a burnt glove stick to your burnt hand is not very comfortable.

20190216/DuckDuckGo what kind of protective gear to wear when soldering gloves
20190216/https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/167265/soldering-protective-gloves

So, here is my updated list of recommended equipment for soldering.

  • Safety glasses
  • Respirator
  • Heat resistant gloves, i.e. leather gloves or welding gloves

In my opinion, simple leather winter gloves can be sufficient. The main point is that you want adequate protection from accidental momentary contact. Sure, with the thickness of typical leather winter gloves, if you hold the soldering iron on one spot of your leather winter gloves for a while, it will probably heat up enough to burn you, but presumably you wouldn’t “accidentally” leave the soldering iron tip on your gloves for that long.

This is a nice welding safety FAQ here. Obviously, many of these more advanced protective gear recommendations don’t apply if you are only doing small soldering work on a tabletop. For example, leather boots are not needed for protection during tabletop soldering.

An important note is that cotton is not recommended for welding work, unless it has been treated to be fire retardant. Wool is rugged against heat, though. Of course, with soldering, since you don’t need to worry about causing paper to burn from momentary contact, so the same with cotton clothing you may be wearing. The scale makes all the difference.

20190216/https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/education-center/welding-safety/Pages/personal-protective-equipment-faqs.aspx

Okay, so what about the respirators? What kind of respirator should be used for soldering?

20190216/DuckDuckGo what kind of respirator soldering protection
20190216/https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/161139/which-are-the-safety-recommendations-for-soldering

Now, this is where things get quite interesting. When you do soldering, there is actually no risk of the metals vaporizing and getting into air. The lead will stay put where it is, so don’t worry about breathing in lead. The smoke you see from the soldering is from the rosin core flux. Okay, so what about the smell from the soldering iron warming up, that smell that I don’t like? Well, there is not conclusive evidence on the Internet about discussion on this, so I’m just going to assume it is either iron oxide somehow being vaporized, or it is ozone somehow being produced, although I reckon that it doesn’t really smell like ozone to me.

Matter of fact, there really is no long-term occupational risk associated with those people who have done a lot of soldering. By contrast, one occupational risk found with other occupations is “whitefinger.” What is that? Working with tools that vibrate a lot for long periods of time can cause the onset of random disruptions in blood vessel flow, long after having performed the work. So, remember to be careful with vibrating tools. Of course, the risks are much less when such tools are used as a hobby rather than professionally.

20190216/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_white_finger
20190216/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raynaud%27s_syndrome
20190216/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothenar_hammer_syndrome

Now, this is a random but interesting fact I’ve found out about soldering. Are you heating up a new soldering iron for the first time? Make sure you are careful to tin the tip as soon as you possibly can, otherwise when the tip oxidizes without any tinning, your soldering iron is practically useless. Also, do not try to scrape the oxide off with a screwdriver, because if you nick through the iron coating on a copper core tip, you would have ruined your soldering iron.

20190216/DuckDuckGo solder iron warm up smell oxidize
20190216/https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/365486/soldering-iron-tip-turns-black-after-first-use-and-wont-melt-solder