Why soldering paste

[Les Huckins <jhuckins@xxxx>]

Thank you for not jumping on me when I first mentioned it. I'll explain
very briefly: it makes a better joint much quicker. Why do you want a
quicker joint? So that you don't burn the circuit board or other item
you're working on... get on, do it, get off.. I've done a ton of
circuit board work and figure as soon as I mention paste I'm going to
get jumped on over contamination or some such. Whatever, I'll never
tell you anything I'm not sure of and have not had great success with
over a prolonged period of time.

How I got onto it? First, you have to remember that everyone has
something to impart, i.e., you can learn from the dumbest, often
something of such value you that it can impact the rest of your life.

In the early days of TV repair, fuses (the little cartridge type, not
the current ones as used in the car) snapped into sockets, but pretty
soon they changed to wire-in fuses, partly because they didn't want set
owners to get involved and partly because it was cheaper to use wire
rather than a socket. Ok, here was the problem, when you went out on a
service call and the set needed a fuse but was wired in and you had all
sizes but without the wires you had to make a return trip...not cool,
right! Trying to solder a wire to a fuse can make you look very inept,
the metal inside the fuse cap, melts at about the same temp as the
solder and the end cap pops off. I was one of the early hot-shot TV
repairmen who thought he knew just about everything, but not the fuse
bit. Along comes the guy who knows very little but knows this one bit I
need, how to solder a wire onto a fuse without popping the end. Use
paste! That worked great, solved the problem and that bit of wisdom has
served me well to this date, hope it helps you.

I ended up putting a bit of solder on all of the tail light bulb bases
yesterday, just the shells, no centers as yet. First one I wrote about,
John told me I should have done them all, he was right. I had a friend
step on the brake pedal and stop light was out on that side too. After
I finished that side, turned out I had 2 stop lights so did the other
side. That side had one working and ended up with 2 also. Went from 1
to 4 in one day. I know there's a new board that can relieve you of
doing this but I've always been a fixer and I like doing it. I also
gave the base of each bulb a shot of WD-40 before installing it back in
the socket, ditto the connector.