which solder?

[kgoss]

I use and am a big fan of Cardas solder but good old 60/40 works great too. After soldering a board with Cardas a few minutes with some denatured alcohol and a toothbrush cleans up any flux on the board. For terminal strip work I don’t bother with cleaning the flux.  My $0.02.

[Clover]

I'm looking forward to that new soldering video.  This is my first major soldering project and put frankly, I suck.  One thing I think I may regret is getting the thinnest solder.  I thought it would give me the most control over how much I added, which I am sure is true.  However, I can't hardly see what I am doing and I need to feed in so much length of the thin solder that I need to start off holding the solder further away.  I have a mild tremor which is not so mild when the tip of the solder is ten inches from my hand.  I 1mm shake of my hand is more like 3mm at the end of the solder I'm holding.  Anyways, I failed my glow test last night and looked back over my solder joints this morning in the light and um... yeah, I suck.  A video showing how things should look and also how things should not look would be great.  I personally would love to see some examples pointed out of bad joints that need to be redone.  When new to this, I watched videos showing how it should look.  Problem is most of mine don't look that nice but I'm unsure if they need to be redone or if they are just ugly. 

[Thermioniclife]

That's why I use .031 solder, .020 is so thin you need a mile of it to make a joint and it droops so you may need to stop and regroup with more solder to feed. This means more heat build up and cooling and reheating of the joint. It's a PITA.

[Doc B.]

I didn't specifically try to make bad joints. But I do discuss what is happening when a good joint forms. I did happen to pooch up one pad on a PC board and I demo using a desoldering pump to clean it up.

A joint is going right when you get both pieces you are soldering - wire and terminal or wire and pad - hot enough to flow the solder. That's why it is critical to touch the tip of the iron to both pieces. You know it's going right when you see the solder flowing and sucking into the joint. If it just blobs on top the joint is not good - not enough heat, tip not on the work long enough and/or not touching both parts. If so much solder goes on that it runs down the terminal that is the opposite problem, too much heat, tip on the work too long, too much solder.

I agree that around .032" is a sweet spot for solder diameter, at least for me. In fact I may have misspoken that I used .025" in the video. The markings are worn off the spool and it may well be .032"

[fbh]

I have been using Cardas Quad Eutectic for many years.  I also have some thin Kester 44 that I have used for SMD parts

is that any sonic difference between that solder?