soldering iron

You just have to get used to them. First time I started playing with electrics/ electronics was about the 8th grade. My Dad's boss used to carry a GIGANTIC soldering gun called a "Versa Tool" It was a huge, heavy, transformer gun, with a hollow tube, a ceramic sleeve, and a carbon in the tip. You could LITERALLY heat it up to bright red hot, "snap" the tip and pieces would fall off. OVERkill LOL.

Anyhow, guys were always dropping and breaking them, and Dad would bring the remains home to me. I finally collected 3, and had enough parts to put one workable iron together. As I recall, there was some electrical tape involved, LOL I can find no evidence that these ever existed, at least not on the www

The one great thing about guns is they heat quicker, so if depending on what you are doing, you don't have to have the iron sitting there hot for hours.