Customer Reviews

Quality Hand Soldering & Circuit Board Repair

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a pretty good reference if you know how to solder but want better quality. In most areas, it could have used more detail, and in some cases better illustrations. Its quite short and a very quick read - best read with a soldering iron in hand so you can work at his techniques. Overall, worth the purchase price.

This is a much improved revised 4th edition (Dec 2003) that lives up to it's product description. Well written with excellent material and illustrations it really is a must have for soldering professionals.
Note that the other reviews listed below are not as favourable. One is for a different book entirly and another is for an earlier edition.

This book is a great introduction to basic hand soldering for the inexperienced. It's true that the book is quite brief in some areas, but I feel that this just makes it more useable for the average electronics technician or hobbyist. Every line is worth its ink. You don't need to skim through 300 pages of a textbook just to end up highlighting several lines of useful information. A complete beginner could get a lot out of this book, but even a more experienced solderer will learn a thing or two.

I purchased this book expecting to learn how to solder and desolder. Although the book explains some proper techniques, it is not a book that explains much on the "How To" of soldering. It gives some fair information about circuit boards but the author is very vague in explaining details. For example, one section of the book explains that different soldering and desoldering techniques are used depending on the circuit board. The author goes on to stress that you should know if your board is single layer, multi-layer, or double sided but he does not explain how to tell the differences or how to identify the board. The book is full of definition but very little explanation. Also, the illustrations are not drawn very well. They are very difficult to understand. I give this rating two stars because I do not believe it is worth the high price. I have found better information on this subject by searching the Internet. Worth a read, but not worth $45.

I agree this book is for someone that has never soldered before. I guess I was looking for some more details about hot air and reflow soldering, which is barely talked about. Also, there are only about 6 photos in the entire book, which I thought was kind of cheap. Photos are very valuable to me, but the ones in this book are black and white, dark and not useful.

The book itself is a good book, full of the info I needed. When I ordered it, it said it had some highlighting and some light pen marking. (Which was fine to me, I don't mind a little highlight here and there, and some extra notes. It's usually helpful.)However, when I received it and opened it, the book wasn't "highlighted". They had used a dark red marker that bled through every page they wrote on. Having both sides of the page "highlighted", made it difficult to read some of the sections. I'm disappointed that that information was withheld from the description. There's a big difference from highlighting and red marker bleeding through the pages. If the company that sold this book to me is reading this, start being more descriptive and informing people of what they are really getting! This is the last time I'll buy from you. There are plenty of other places to buy books from that are more honest in their descriptions.

Modern Electronics Soldering Techniques, by Andrew Singmin, published by Sams, has very few pages dedicated to soldering techniques. Most of the book's 293 pages are drone on superfluously about how to draw a schematic, recognizing electrical components, electronics related math, basic hand tools, and such. The first chapter is titled Soldering Fundamentals but very little of it is even remotely related to soldering. The book is a farce and a waste of money and paper. What it does seem to cover is an exhaustive essay on electronics as a hobby. But it is so blabby that it couldn't hold one's interest.