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magnifying glass and helping hands for soldering kid

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  magnifying glass and helping hands for soldering kid Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> - 2026-09-15 08:41 -0800
    Re: magnifying glass and helping hands for soldering kid Lane W <cactus_DAC@yahoo.com> - 2026-09-15 11:20 -0600
      Re: magnifying glass and helping hands for soldering kid Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> - 2026-09-16 10:01 -0800
        Re: magnifying glass and helping hands for soldering kid bp@www.zefox.net - 2026-09-19 14:51 +0000

#615 — magnifying glass and helping hands for soldering kid

Hi, I'm teaching my 9 yo son how to solder for a homeschooling class. We
have the soldering iron station, a silicon mat, and some other things.
But he needs magnification and some kind of helping hands. I see quite a
few helping-hand + magnifying glass combos on Amazon for around 50 USD,
but they all look cheap and chinse and was wondering if I should
get him some kind of nicer set up. Any suggestions from the grizzled
veterans?

Personally I don't usually use helping hands because my cheap ones are
bulky and bothersome to work with. Usually I just do other tricks like
setting stuff on top of the PCB or whatever. For magnification, I use a
lightweight pair of magnifying glasses which works pretty well, though
I've heard other people use coin-type magnifying stations and that
sounds kind of nice.

We have money available through the program so that spending a few
hundred USD is not out of reach. We are very limited though on desk and
storage space, and all equipment has to be put away on a small shelf
after we are done with the lesson.

-- 
Christopher Howard

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#616

Christopher Howard wrote:
> Hi, I'm teaching my 9 yo son how to solder for a homeschooling class. We
> have the soldering iron station, a silicon mat, and some other things.
> But he needs magnification and some kind of helping hands. I see quite a
> few helping-hand + magnifying glass combos on Amazon for around 50 USD,
> but they all look cheap and chinse and was wondering if I should
> get him some kind of nicer set up. Any suggestions from the grizzled
> veterans?
> 
> Personally I don't usually use helping hands because my cheap ones are
> bulky and bothersome to work with. Usually I just do other tricks like
> setting stuff on top of the PCB or whatever. For magnification, I use a
> lightweight pair of magnifying glasses which works pretty well, though
> I've heard other people use coin-type magnifying stations and that
> sounds kind of nice.
> 
> We have money available through the program so that spending a few
> hundred USD is not out of reach. We are very limited though on desk and
> storage space, and all equipment has to be put away on a small shelf
> after we are done with the lesson.
> 
9 is awful young for this.

My father is a very very good solderer and basically gave up on getting 
me to take it up in any similar fashion. I continued to obtain three 
degrees in electrical engineering, very happy with breadboards thank 
you, and do zero soldering today. My primary focus right now is on 
difficult Computer Science Theory. I was fascinated by Data & Digital 
Logic Design Class, but so were most of my colleagues. I've leapfrogged 
them into deep logic in the fields of Fast Software Engineering that 
Scales with Large Input (if I were to dream up a thesis paper describing 
my current work).

Are you sure he really wants to learn soldering?

I guess what I'm saying, my suggestion is a nice breadboard and some wires.

-- 
Everything I work for
Everything I long for is always just too far
Everything I hope for never comes to be
Everything I bleed for burns a scar on me
Everything I fight for leaves a bitter taste
Everything I cry for laughs into my face
Everything I scream for barely knows my name
Everything I'd die for will die just the same

Everything I worked for
Everything I longed for was always just too far
Everything I hoped for never came to be
Everything I bled for burned a scar on me
Everything I fought for left a bitter taste
Everything I cried for laughed into my face
Everything I screamed for barely knew my name
Everything I died for died just the same

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#617

Lane W <cactus_DAC@yahoo.com> writes:

> Christopher Howard wrote:
> Are you sure he really wants to learn soldering?
>

He really enjoys it so far, and has begged me to let him do extra
practice. He did an LED/resistor kit and also a photosensor/transistor
project basically all by himself, except I was there to monitor for
safety purposes and to give some feedback on his technique. But some of
the kits we bought have very small pads, so magnification would be nice.
Regarding the helping hands, I've been helping him myself when necessary
using a pair of pliers, but he commented that he would prefer to have
his own helping hands.

He enjoys reading technical manuals and does most of the work assembling
our new appliances. He does play around also with some solderless kits
like a project board I found at a second-hand store, as well as
snap-circuits.

I can't say much to a guy with three electrical engineering degrees, but
soldering seems to still be a useful skill in my less exalted circles.

-- 
Christopher Howard

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#618

Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> wrote:
> Lane W <cactus_DAC@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
>> Christopher Howard wrote:
>> Are you sure he really wants to learn soldering?
>>
> 
> He really enjoys it so far, and has begged me to let him do extra
> practice. He did an LED/resistor kit and also a photosensor/transistor
> project basically all by himself, except I was there to monitor for
> safety purposes and to give some feedback on his technique. But some of
> the kits we bought have very small pads, so magnification would be nice.
> Regarding the helping hands, I've been helping him myself when necessary
> using a pair of pliers, but he commented that he would prefer to have
> his own helping hands.
> 
> He enjoys reading technical manuals and does most of the work assembling
> our new appliances. He does play around also with some solderless kits
> like a project board I found at a second-hand store, as well as
> snap-circuits.
> 
> I can't say much to a guy with three electrical engineering degrees, but
> soldering seems to still be a useful skill in my less exalted circles.
> 
It crosses my mind that soldering isn't exclusively an electronics activity.
If, for now, he's interested in the process, it might be worthwhile to show
him the mechanical side of the process and the chemical affinities that make
it possible and useful. That would buy some time to let his manual skills
develop further. The chemistry of solders and fluxes is the same, no matter
if it's ball grid arrays, wires, mechanical parts or plumbing fixtures. 

As one who learned to solder at about your son's age, it's much easier
to learn the fundamentals of a skill on hand-sized workpieces and only
then consider the difficulties of large or small projects. 

Just for your own amusement (and possibly your son's) see if you can find
a copy Fred Rosebury's "Handbook of Electron Tube and Vacuum Techniques".
It's still in copyright but snippets are available online and a library
might have a copy. It was written in the 1960's and the supplier data is
very out of date, but the techniques are still very relevant and soldering
is a primary one. Anybody who uses a microwave oven owes Fred a debt of
gratitude.

hth,

bob prohaska

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