The DIY Toolkit – Luxury Items

In my previous installment, we went through the bare essentials for any DIY toolkit and came to a total of $38 for the tools and parts that anybody should have on-hand. With those items, you should be able to do pretty much anything with a bit of elbow grease. More experienced DIYers wont be satisfied with just the essentials, however, so lets take a look at the “luxury items” that make life easier on the workbench.

Luxury Items:

• “Helping Hands” (often called a “third hand” or “3rd hand”) – $13
  What? Designs vary, but you’ll usually get a nice sturdy base, articulating arms with alligator clips, an attached articulating magnifying glass, and a holder for your soldering iron.
  Why? When you need to solder one thing to another thing, it helps when both of those things aren’t moving around the table. You need one hand for the soldering iron and another to feed the solder, so what are you supposed to hold the wires with? I cannot express how helpful such a device is, and looking back I consider the time I spent soldering without one of these to be the dark ages. The magnifying lens is helpful as well, saving you from needing to squint and shove your face right up in the hot zone to see what you’re doing.
  Could just use: I used to use books to hold wires in place down on the table. I burned a hole in my table doing that.

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• Wire Stripper – $5
  What? Unlike the women in your town who dropped out of high school and are dead inside, these strippers you are allowed to touch. There are many types of wire stripper, but the gist is that they’re tools for stripping the PVC shielding off of a wire and leaving the metal exposed, so you can connect it to something else. They’re basically scissors that don’t close all the way.
  Why? You have a wire. You need to connect one end to Complicated Thing A and the other end to Complicated Thing B. The wire is shielded in PVC. What do you do? You strip the shielding off of both ends to expose the metal wire, that’s what. I use the linked item but its spring forces the handles open too hard so I bind both sides together with a rubber band to balance it out.
  Could just use: For the lack of a real stripper I’ll use regular scissors and close them partially around a wire and twist. This can be hit-or-miss.
• Desoldering Braid – $4
  What? Desoldering braid is kind of like flat shoestring made of copper. When it’s pressed against molten solder, it absorbs and cools the solder. It’s sold in spools.
  Why? When you’ve made a solder connection and you want to undo that, desoldering braid is how you do it. If you push the braid against some set solder with a hot iron, the iron melts the solder, then the solder is absorbed into the braid like a sponge. Problem undone. There are more expensive and elaborate desoldering tools, but if you don’t plan on making that many mistakes, desoldering braid is the best cost/function value.
  Could just use: Don’t screw up?

So there’s another $22 worth of stuff. Do you need to have it? Maybe not, but down the line you’ll wish you did. Down the line when I’m discussing soldering, I’ll assume you have all of the basics but not all of these things.