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Re: magnifying glass and helping hands for soldering kid

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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
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Everything I died for died just the same

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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

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