How To Solder Wires Like A Pro

so welcome back to the shop friends so today I thought I'd share with you the correct method for soldering wires soldering of course is the in my opinion is the best way to connect wires many of us kind of maybe default to these little guys we've seen these little automotive style connectors in there and well they're not great just go look at your trailer after a couple of years being outside using these there's there's this they're not ideal the ideal way though is to solder it's a little intimidating I think by a lot of folks cuz maybe you don't have the equipment or you have that bad luck with it I'll show you how easy this is to do with just a just a tiny handful of tools and I'll show you let's go into the kit right now there's really just a few things you need in your kit and you know it's worth $100 or so you can put together this kit that'll serve you for a lifetime you'll be able to repair or electronics and different things that many often times we just throw it away because it's not worth the trouble of trying to find someone to fix it you know little things that come loose I think it's worth it so yeah just get yourself a soldering gun just to you don't think anything fancy just these these wallet Weller's they're good they're probably in the I don't know 40 30 40 dollar range not very much you want some rosin pastes flux you want a little brush and some rosin core solder you don't want to use the solder to use for plumbing it it's it's not the right stuff and this right here this stuff's amazing this is a 3m silicon dielectric grease type of thing that we use as well as you know a good selection of shrink tubing so let's let's show you how to prep it and then we'll we'll go through the whole process here do yourself a favor and get a couple of these alligator clips that you don't have to have those fancy stands you know if you're just doing this once in a while take two alligator clips and clamp them in your vise like this now some of these alligator clips have a pretty tight spring on them so take some shrink tubing on the ones you're gonna keep in your kit and just melt it on there and that way they won't mess up mess up your wire and this is gonna hold things securely and you're just gonna get a whole lot a whole lot better job okay so for joining the wire there's a couple different ways of doing it but what I have found to be the best and this is what my granddad always did it is you is you fray the ends of the wire like this kind of splay them out like this and join them intermingle so the intermingle kind of mesh like fingers together pinch one side like this here I started bringing everything together and then twist twist this side here and then twist this side over here like that and that's gonna give you the the cleanest the smallest cuz we're going to shrink if this is going to be something that's exposed when we're gonna put our shrink tubing on there it's gonna be a little more low-profile and look a little better now we can clamp it into our our jaws and get everything ready for the solder I don't think I mentioned you wanna a damp sponge to any set just any sort of old worn-out sponge should be fine now with everything ready you're gonna take your rosin flux right and it's and we're gonna apply that that on there like that so just just coat that on there and that's gonna help that that's solder to bind it wouldn't probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have heated that up first then we're gonna get our soldering iron and untangle the cord it hooks on everything okay so this shouldn't take long to heat up so what we're going to do is we're gonna put that on there like that just until that flux starts to melt in that rosin and it starts to melt down inside the wires there right and then and then grandad always said you touch that the end of that there to tin it I don't know why just always have and we're gonna heat from the bottom and we're gonna start heating that up until this melts now we don't want to touch the solder to the to the iron well that took a long time to heat up there there we go now it's now a second of them just like that we don't don't put so much on there that it's going to it's going to you know drip off don't try to dribble it there I could probably use a little bit more right there there we go that's all that solder joint looks pretty good now remember this is marginal advice so take it for what it's worth now we want a water waterproof this this is where we're going to use the 3m silicone paste this having this in your shop anytime you put together electrical connectors or anything like that is so it's so good and it'll just put a little bit of that on there like that and then now we're gonna do our shrink tubing now I'm gonna use a piece of clear shrink tubing just so you can kind of see what's going on and what a great connection that this is so what we can do here is once we have that grease on there now we'll thread our shrink tubing on here like this and try to try to be careful it is to hold that not to scrape all that that silicone grease off there but and just place it like that now your shrink tapes gonna shrink on the ends about 10% so I'm always pretty pretty liberal with that and get myself plenty of shrinks plenty of tubing now you can use I'm going to use a heat gun you don't have to use a heat gun you can use a lighter you can use a torch problem with the lighter in the torch is if you're not really careful they will it will tend to burn the wire in the housing start from the middle you're going to start from the very middle and you'll see that that's starting to shrink right there and then work to the outside edges and you'll see I think you can see you'll see that Silicon making that seal as it as the street tape tightens around the connection and it ideally you want it to squeeze out like that side right there probably should have put a little bit more on the housing but that looks that looks pretty good right there actually now once that's cool to the touch you can clean that clean that silicon off there and you have a really good as good as you're going to get a waterproof connection for joining the two wires together that's probably going to be tougher than the wire itself so that's all there really is to it for connecting those and that that again that's gonna be your best connection if you can take a little bit more time and you can solder these with a shrink tape instead of using those blue automotive style connectors you you're most likely not gonna have to go back and redo redo your electrical work especially for stuff it's gonna be sitting outside like trailers or especially boat trailers or there's a lot of water and spray on those and it's pretty hard on electrical stuff so what I'm gonna do is so I also was gonna add so a lot of folks have been asking what happened to Wrangler Mart Wrangler Mart was our amazon affiliate store where I put the things that I like you know people often asked you know what do you recommend what do you like for what's that shirt or what pocketknife you like or what camera equipment you're using and then they shut down the stores well they we've got a new one now they've they started a new program and I will put a link to that down in the subject heading it's at all the wrangler Mart calm we'll eventually we'll go over there I'm forwarding those addresses so what but what I'll do is because I know I'll get a lot of questions about this I'll do affiliate links affiliate links are a way for us to support the channel if you buy something on Amazon that they that I feature in the video we get a small percentage from that it helps to helps us to fund the channel it doesn't cost you any more than what you'd normally pay for buy it for but it's just a way of of helping creators out so what you're gonna want for your electrical kit for just basic stuff is is a soldering iron I'll put one there that's a good quality and not too expensive and a heat gun when you're buying a heat gun I'll make sure you get one that stands on its own that's got some feet on it like this one here will sit like this on your bench that way you can work on it hands-free so if you're heating stuff or like that to have two hands and have it so you don't have to the clamping device is actually pretty nice so those are the two those are the two main things right there I'll put the flux the silicon paste you definitely want some of that that's a must have that says that's like the wd-40 of electrical work and solder and shrink tape I would if I was gonna add to that I would invest in a pair of good strippers wire strippers are very nice they'll pay for themselves on if you have a project project and some good crimpers and nippers and that's about it so I'll put together that kit for you and on the store so thanks for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 2,761,074

Rating: 4.4968238 out of 5

Keywords: Wranglerstar, how do solder, soldering standed wire, electricial, how to, soldering, flux, electronics, how to solder, do it yourself, soldering iron, diy, tutorial, plumbing, copper, how-to, iron, smd, soldering tutorial, lead free, soldering tips, tip, tin, pcb

Id: qxqZJH3SfN4

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Jellodyne]

But don't use solder joints in a car, they can become brittle and come apart with vibration. Use adhesive lined butt splice crimp connectors.