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228

I am fairly sure I bought this when I was ~14 at a actual RadioShack. I have several other spools but when you are hobbyist that has too littlie time on your hands, things like this last a long time. Well, that and I forget where the hell I packed things when moving so I buy more stuff.

I was working on a minor project and thought it was funny and that you might agree. Also, ive owned several of those "fire starter" irons they used to sell. Ive upgraded but still use some fairly basic stuff. @stupidbird

I am fairly sure I bought this when I was ~14 at a actual RadioShack. I have several other spools but when you are hobbyist that has too littlie time on your hands, things like this last a long time. Well, that and I forget where the hell I packed things when moving so I buy more stuff. I was working on a minor project and thought it was funny and that you might agree. Also, ive owned several of those "fire starter" irons they used to sell. Ive upgraded but still use some fairly basic stuff. @stupidbird

(post is archived)

[–] • 6 pts

I still have a partial spool of Radio Shack solder. It's probably from around 1998 or so, but I went through at least 100 rolls through the 80s and 90s before I switched to Ersin Multicore solder in the late 90s. I also have some Radio Shack silver solder from the late 80s packed up in some box in the garage somewhere. Probably in the same box with some RS Micronta digital multimeters from the 80s. I ditched the "pencil" irons from RS long ago and still regularly use my beloved 35 years old Ungar UTC-200 soldering station more often than my modern stations. Good times those days were.

[–] • 3 pts

Is it just me? I can't find flux anywhere. Can't get solder to act right. Got a chunk of lead from an old retired plumber and it works fine. Kinda dirty but gets it done without burning shit up.

[–] • 2 pts

Yeah, i never had much luck, trying to make circuit bent instruments out of random electronics. Solder was too thick I think

[–] • 2 pts

You can buy both tinned and syringe flux on Amazon. I'd guess techni-tool has it as well.

[–] • 1 pt

Not sure if you have heard about Louis Rossmann but I like the flux they have. https://store.rossmanngroup.com/

[–] • 1 pt

I still have some rolls of Radio Shack cable kicking around, the stuff they sold was of surprisingly useful quality. I miss those spools of two conductor pure copper red/black 18GA they sold, that stuff was useful for everything.

I still have a non-grounded rat shack 1/4" tip solder iron that gets used a lot. It's just a weller-clone, and works fine. I may have some solder left, but I went with Kester 60/40 "44" core years ago. Not that the shack stuff was bad, the Kester was available to me through company purchases and I could get 1lb spools of varying sizes at a price that was equivalent to the 'shack's 8oz spools.

For the most part, I never had any problem with their tools or solder equipment.

[–] • 1 pt

Nice, yeah. Ive never had problems with it either. Even at the end if you could find what you wanted at the shack it was usually ok. It was really sad when the component section just kept getting smaller and smaller.... They were the product of an era where you were still expected and even encouraged to fix your own stuff or to even build things.

[–] • 2 pts

Some of their components were shit. For example, they sold a LM337 regulator - I swear those were floor sweepings because I could build the example circuit in the data manual and they'd self-destruct with noise.

Tools, solder, wire? No problem at all. They used to sell Pratt-Read rebrands and even had Xcelite tools for a while before Cooper moved them to China.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

It's not that old. It's from January.