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AMANDA CLAIRE: So I don't have to start around and plug in right now because I'm just going
to talk a little bit about the theory of how you do good soldering. So generally, remember
what you're doing is your melting a low-melting-point metal, which is your solder, and you're getting
it liquid so that you can dab it where you need so that you're completing the connection
between the copper, the stripped copper ends of a wire, and your component, and then when
that metal cools, it will harden up and then you have a permanent joint. So--but the way
you do it properly is to actually--what you want to do is you want to heat the component
and so it gets hot enough so that that component is basically as hot as your soldering iron
is, and then you touch the solder to the component and just sort of let it flow over it. So some
people who are kind a beginning at soldering what they will do is still sort of melt the
solder on to the soldering iron and then take that blob over and just sort of dab it there,
but that blob is not really going to stick to the metal until the metal itself is hot
so really the better way to do it is to hold the iron to the piece of metal so like if
I was--this iron is not plugged in right now, but I would hold it to this terminal here
of this jack until it gets really really hot, and then when its hot enough all I've got
to do is touch a tip of the solder there and it will just flow very cleanly over that terminal
and then you're done, and that's a very nice clean way to solder.