First "new" tool since the fire.

My dad gave me an old Weller gun that belonged to an uncle several years ago. At first I thought I'd never use it because you're "supposed to use irons, not guns" for this crap. Ended up using it all the time! Tonight I asked dad if he had any more soldering tools and sure as heck he had this old Montgomery Wards, made by Weller back when Weller still made good guns.
Next thing I need is a replacement for "Big Bertha" the old 200 watt iron that made cap cans and chassis grounds fun, instead of an exercise in futility.

 

I like guns for a few reasons, one they warm right up, pull the trigger and in a couple seconds you're soldering, I'm impatient. The lights kinda nice too.
The thing I like most is if I forgot to unplug after soldering it's no problem, only gets hot when you squeeze the trigger. Forget to unplug an iron and you could cause a fire.
Those sorta suck.

Tomorrow I'm going to grab the 64 Princeton Reverb. Tubes didn't melt in that one so maybe it won't be toooooo bad. We'll see.
I'll start a thread on the restoration but needless to say it could take some time.
Hell of a time for Classic Tone to stop making transformers!

 

No no solder. Gotta pick some up, hopefully I can still get the good old poisonous stuff.
Although the way this year's been going, who knows? But if they have it at the two places that normally do in town, I'm buying all of it!
Them other fools can buy the toilet paper.

 

Went looking for a replacement Big Bertha, my old 200 watt cap can and chassis ground iron yesterday. Antique store in town had two at $6.50 a pop, grabbed both, Bertha was 5 bucks at the same place. Honestly wasn't expecting to find one that fast, two was a bonus. Once you've used a bigass iron for cans and grounds nothing else will do.

 

Nothing wrong with that. If I'm doing a lot of soldering an iron is nicer, like putting a whole board together. I still need to find some small irons, had an old Tandy 40 ish watter I really liked. Might even try a soldering station some day.
An article about Weller, how he went from radio repair to manufacturing tools.
https://stevenjohnson.com/soldering/soldering-weller-1963.htm