Soldering’s Best Friend

A video about charcoal? When it’s compressed or long-life charcoal, then yes, a whole video about my precious compressed charcoal. I would marry compressed charcoal if I could. And you might too once you watch all the ways it is awesome – reduced oxidizing? Use it as a jig to hold prongs while soldering? Carve it out to make your own crucible for small melts? A soldering surface that lasts for years and can be easily modified? Yes to all of it.

This Tool Talk is specifically about the long-life or compressed charcoal. For this kind, you need harder tools to carve up the charcoal to create a crucible. I.e., use your flex shaft and burs in order to carve it. Or use your flex shaft and drill bits to make holes in the block.

With the soft style of charcoal blocks, you can usually carve them up with hand tools, but they don’t stay cohesive for nearly as long as the compressed kinds. Both are great at reducing your soldering time and reducing the chance of fire scale on silver. Try it out, and let me know in the comments what you think about charcoal!