massive soldering iron

[supermanotorious]

My grandpa owned a company that did professional lighting and sound at concerts, stadiums, you name it, back in the day. My dad told me of a large soldering iron my grandpa would use for the massive cables they used and I always thought it would awesome for soldering large gauge vehicle wire inside of crimp on style connectors. I was over at my dad's the other day and he mentioned that iron, I asked if he had and when he last used it. He was happy to loan it to me on an indefinite basis. I can not wait to use this beast!

 

[itsid]

cool.. also it can heat your shop and double your power bill in an instant

'sid

 

[mckutzy]

Nice, what a 1000w at least?

Here at my work, we(I am the predominant man though) do the soldering the ol' old school way, copper and a furnace. Although(I hate to say it) a good steady heat electric one, in "some" situations can beat a heated copper any day all day.
Treat it right, a good bar of sal, it will be given to your kids in the long run.

 

[Poboy kartman]

Yep....my dad had one of those......except it didn't have a cord.....I was six years old when he died....I did all kinds of stuff with that thing.....except soldering....I was clueless as to what it was supposed to be used for......

 

[machinist@large]

The iron is a good start, it's the rest of the needed kit that will turn it from a toy to a tool. And since there are as many ideas as to what you need for that kit, I refuse to even guess what yours will wind up looking like.

All I can recommend is that you use serious caution; that one has enough thermal mass to be dangerous if you don't respect it.

 

[mckutzy]

What brand/make is it?
Some companies will rebuild it for cheap or free. Kinda like to have pride in there product coming back years later surviving and still being used.

 

[OzFab]

Ryan, keep a close eye on the power cable, watch that it doesn't heat up too much...

...copper and a furnace...

I think there's still one or two in my garage that belonged to my grandfather...

 

[itsid]

Yepp as said, find the make and model;
the cement looks brittle...
bet it was dropped more than once already...
I wouldn't run it for any longer period to keep the heater alive,
once it burns through the filler, it'll start burning through the coil..
and that's when it'll start to die.

Maybe it's not a bad idea to have it serviced before it's a paper weight...

'sid

 

[mckutzy]

You know if I had the cash(or at least if I could convince the misses I had the cash) I want a copper furnace.
I had bought a new copper from my work's machine shop, but I'll be using a brick furnace till I can get a proper one.

 

[supermanotorious]

thanks for the suggestion

https://www.americanbeautytools.com/repair

 

[itsid]

300 Watts?
impressive.. 6 times the power of my el-cheapo soldering station...

'sid

 

[mckutzy]

Ya that's the one, them people are of the best.
That's an awesome tool.

 

[mckutzy]

At work here(a big sheet metal factory), just doing a bunch of drain pans for water heaters. I was just thinking about how I'd like to try an iron like that to do this particular job. No cool/heat cycles to really worry about, albeit old school way is cool and can produce excellent results, I'd still like to try.
I might have to look for one.

 

[Rickracer]

I have one like that that you heat up with a torch and it stays hot for a good while, got it from a friend with a radiator shop, said he didn't use it anymore.

 

[mckutzy]

Soldering almost is going of the wayside. Rad shop, roofing, bicycles, even plumbing is basically going plastic.
Our factory used to make a bunch of roofing products, alot of the types got replaced by plastic variants.