flux is your friend. When you use flux and your iron is hot enough (but not too hot on a PCB!) the solder will actually flow to the solder point. Also tin the wire and the solder point.
Dip the iron in flux, then touch solder to it. The tip should "grab" some solder and be coated in it.
Dip the wire in flux then touch it to the iron and watch it soak up some solder (add a dab more solder if needed)
brush (with a brush or Q-tip) flux on the solder point and to the same.
Then brush more flux on both the tinned wire and the tinned solder point, and heat them together. Done.
My hardest lesson was about DE-soldering. It's actually quite hard to melt a good solder joint with just a hot iron. Even when using too much heat. The trick is to use flux, and melt MORE SOLDER onto it. The extra, liquid solder will melt the old joint like it was nothing.
Before I grasped that concept, I tried like hell to remove a wire from something and became impatient. Too much heat plus a *Very light* tug on a wire... and I pulled a solder pad right off of a PCB. Doh!
Just broke my personal record for number of consecutive days without dying!
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Re: One thing I've learned is my soldering skills still suck.
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One thing I've learned is my soldering skills still suck.
