I agree with all that has been said about soldering, the advice to have an iron, and the recommendations. I too, have a soldering iron and use it for many things both in this hobby and elsewhere.

That having been said, I'd still go with the threaded rod recommendation for the LT-40. What SIG describes is to solder a (smooth) clevis to a short piece of rod and then epoxy the sub-assembly into the plastic rod (which then slides into an outer sleeve.

If you use the threaded rod, you can screw on a nice-quality clevis (like Sulivan) and still epoxy the rod into the plastic inner-sleeve. The threads will give a better surface to hold with the epoxy anyway. If this is the ARF, then you'll probably prefer to use the supplied inner/outer sleeves as the diameter match up. If this is the kit, then you may wish to replace the supplied rod and sleeves with something like Sulivan flexible stuff. In that case, you'd have a much smoother moving control system.

Just my 2 cents worth. Maybe less, but I'm not offering refunds!

Dave.