Gear Review: Draper Gas Soldering Iron.

The lid doubles as a stand. A nice touch but
fairly useless.

I bought the Draper Gas Soldering Iron because most of the electrical work I do is automotive, splicing into the vehicle's existing wiring loom, a task for which the usual mains powered soldering iron isn't really suited. The rationale behind getting the butane powered one wasn't just that it would free me from being tethered to the wall, by being smaller and lighter (around 14cm long), it would work better for fine detail work than the "standard" ones with the large heated length that mean that you can't really grip towards the tip for fine control.  

Now that I've had it for a few months and have done a variety of jobs with it,  I feel that there are some issues that need to be highlighted. Nothing that would stop me buying it had I known in advance but still quirks worthy of note.

The main issue with the iron is that it takes quite a long time to get up to temperature. In fact, all of its other annoying... quirks, are caused by this fact. The iron taking so long to heat up makes it very thirsty, as quite a lot of gas is used before it attains a temperature that allows it to be used for work. The knock on effect of this is that doing jobs involving many joints can be irritating as frequent stops are needed to refuel the iron: exactly the kind of concentration breaking distraction that isn't needed on precision work. By the same token though, even just using the iron for minor tasks means refilling it after each piece of work, as each job will involve the iron going through a wasteful extended heating cycle.

Another side effect of the temperature problems is that the iron has to be held on the work for a long time before it is hot enough for solder to flow into the joint, not the greatest of requirements when you're not working in situ, which is surely the whole point of a cordless soldering iron.

Still, these issues only really become more than just annoying if you run out of butane. As long as you have a can kicking around, the iron is no harder to refill than a lighter. On top of this, it is still useful as a light and compact soldering iron, especially when it can be found for around £12. 

For reference: what I mean by "standard"

If you do a lot of in-situ or otherwise difficult to access electronics work, and can accept the limitations  (you have a can of butane within reach whilst you work), the Draper Gas Soldering Iron can be an indispensable tool. It's small, light and simple to use: there is really nothing better at this price point. It's battery powered rivals being both more expensive and having the downside of batteries being much more expensive than butane. For bench work I can't really recommend it over a corded iron, but for anything else, the flexibility it affords is well worth the asking price.