Sure, some fathers buy slides, or pools, or dolls for their daughters. But us geeks buy things like this. http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/PS1502AU I expect here solder joints won't be so good at first, but you have to start some where. I will start her out with my coldheat soldering iron since it is pretty safe for kids. If she does well I'll move her up to a regular soldering iron. I expect many burns on each of us before this is over
Tom: I'm almost 47 years old and electronics have been my hobby all my life, so I've been soldering circuits for about 35 years. Probably my best advice is to keep the iron tip wet or "tinned" and if it gets krustys on it (As they do) wipe it off on a damp sponge and keep tinned. Burns: I've had a few nasty ones among the years including grabbing a 25W iron backwords, tip first but trained myself that "Burn means get ice quickly" so have some handy and able to get within 30 seconds. In that case I applied ice in a few seconds and although it made a nasty white burn across my palm only hurt a fraction, no blister to speak of and healed completely. I have gotten audio amp kits from Qkits before and all were easy to assemble, well laid out, great quality and worked. Zener diodes had a little tag indicating voltage which I thought was a nice touch. The only "Bad" thing I can think of is terrible asian to english translations in the instruction pamplet they provide. Their resistor color codes were often wrong so I used my VOM to verify values. (Or perhaps I'm going color blind?) But if you can get past the translation they do give a good circuit description which could help if the kit stops functioning in the future. My passion is repairing/refubishing antique electronics and I've decided to "get back to" repairing a 1930 Radiola, similar to this one: The chassis is devided in two: Power supply/audio amp on the bottom of the cabinet, receiver on the top. I'm currently working on the power supply/audio amp which weighs at least 50lbs and has one valve(Tube) for rectification and two for audio amplification. I'm not sure if you know what a superhetrodyne receiver is, but this was one of the 1st model in production. -Steve
This will be my daughters first project. I've hacked a few together in the past. I've done the ol' grab the iron by the pointy end before. I bet almost everyone that uses a soldering iron has had it happen. Good tip on the ice bucket. I'll be sure to have one handy.
Hi All, When I was just a mere child. :Banane14: I put together a Heath Kit short wave radio with a wire that went across the ceiling for reception. I thought I was big stuff then because I could pick up people talking all over the place. Fun-Fun-Fun. Don't remember if I got burned or not. Man that was some kind of Fun. Terry (tiger) I hope Teresa likes doing this New Project.
