Solder Sustainer

Soldering is one of those key maker skills. Typically, you take a soldering iron in one hand, some solder in your other hand, then hold a part with… hang on, we’ve run out of hands. Sometimes you can use clips or vices to hold wires and components together, but wouldn’t it be very handy if you had a spare hand?

The Solder Sustainer gives you this extra hand, not by increasing the number of appendages you have, but by letting you control both the soldering iron and the solder wire with a single hand. Solder is fed out of a tube next to the soldering iron itself. Crucially, this tube is slightly flexible so you can bend it with one finger to direct it where you want to.

We’re not sure if this is really the ultimate solution for all things solder-related, but it’s great to see people creating tools to help them make stuff. Justin says that the Solder Sustainer works well for through-hole and larger surface-mount soldering, but he’s working on version 2, which he hopes will be better for smaller surface-mount parts.