Glacier Girl
Posts: 7841
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Joined: 7/9/2004
Last Login: 5/21/2013
From: Lakeland,
FL, USA
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Phil, some "tips" often it's pure common sense, if you are working on a board, you want a small pencil tip, vs a big old chisel tip. The exact opposite say you are soldering a pair of wires together. It's where do you want your heat to be if you think about it. On the board, one small spot, on the wires, over a broad area for a quick job. Sure you could use a pencil tip for wires, but like said your heat is concentrated in one tiny spot, till you get the rest of the area hot enough to melt your solder most likely you'll have a mess of melted insulation too.
On the board, big old chisel tip is like a bull in a china shop. You'll end up liquifying adjacent solder points trying to get your one spot done.
As for taking care of your equipment, some items. A damp sponge or wipe pad for the tip works wonders in keeping the tip clean and shiny. NEVER EVER use sandpaper to clean a tip.
If you have to touch up a tip, use a file. Sandpaper tends to imbed trash into your tip, a file shaves off the same. One way to keep your tip in tip top shape between solder jobs, when you are done, melt a blob of solder on the tip and leave it there for next time. This coating acts as a sacrificial anode to protect the tip under it. Next time you go to use it let the pen heat up and give your sponge a couple of wipes and you'll have a perfect tip ready to go. And the tip of the tip is the hottest part of your pen, use it, not the sides for soldering.
Oh let's see what else? Heat. you can get something too hot to solder, it will start to form a coating from the heat and the solder won't stick, just like your solder pen tip can do. You cook the tip and burn off the solder and your tip will turn black. Then it won't solder worth a darn as you can't get good heat transfer. Then it's cleaning time before you reattempt to solder. You'll be cleaning your pen and the items.
Flux is your friend. Oxidation, that evil black coating starts the instant, say copper, is exposed to air. Flux helps clean away that oxidation to give your solder a better bite, and to aid in heat transfer.
And don't forget tinning. Makes soldering two items together go a lot quicker.
If it's two dissimilar sized items to be soldered always heat up the bigger item first, then add the smaller item. Again back to the heat thing. If you heat up the small item first then get the big one hot enough and you have a melted mess of insulation, or worse a cold solder joint as by the time you saw all the insulation melting you still didn't get the big part hot enough, and your little part is just barely tacked in place to it.
Motion is a bad thing. You need to have the two items motionless until the solder cools. If something moves before it solidifies it causes minute fractures in the solder and you got yourself a joint just waiting to fail. Something a simple as a pair of wooden clothes pins attached to a board makes a great holding fixture. Plus it lets your hands free to hold the pen and solder.
And heat the item not the solder. You want the heat of the item to draw the solder towards the tip of your pen. Don't do the old get a glob of solder on the pen tip and try and stick it to say a pair of wires. The solder wants to go towards the heat not away from it. Sure you may get some solder on the wires, but you may not get solder all through the wire strands. Again another weak joint waiting to fail.
Practice, practice, practice. Can only make you better.
Also, it's the proper stuff for the job, correct size solder can make a world of difference in your solder jobs. Same for type, rosin core for electronics, acid core for plumbing. Don't mix them up. Then there's silver solder for more of a heavy duty bond. And there's aluminum solder and it's flux for when you get into repairing lipos.
Like I said it's the operator often, more then the equipment. Yes crap equipment can hinder you, but the best in the world isn't going to do a lot if you don't know how to use it.
Get good at it and you'll learn there are ways to "cheat" in soldering, doing something that shouldn't work, but with your skills it can be done.
Like one year at a fly in, I used a 16 penny nail, and a micro torch to solder an esc to a motor when my bud forgot his solder pen. 
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