Possible Delaminated Trace - Noob

[hambone795]

I'm trying to build some pedals for relatives this xmas. I started populating my first board and I am noticing some bubbling around the solder pads. I'm afraid that the traces have lifted from the board and I don't want to continue populating and cutting leads if I'm already screwed. The PCB in question is a press n' peal from techniks if that helps. Am I just being paranoid or should I go ahead and order another pcb? Is bubbling terminally bad? Do you need pics to confirm?

[jafo]

A multimeter is the best way to confirm, but it might be ok (if unpretty) -- copper is kinda flexible, ya know?

[petemoore]

  Circuit boards  can get baked, quick with the iron and adding only 'so much' solder [a bit to 'wet' the joint and carry heat into metals/allow heat to conduct across where only teeny-touch points between materials is]. Then only enough solder to make the joint strength. With a hot iron this whole process takes only 3 or 4 seconds...
    Pretinning anything that is to be soldered is like pre-wetting the surfaces and reduces the amount of 'bake-time' at the joint. Another reason for not continueing to add cold solder to the joint is because it is cold and we're trying to heat the solder and materials at the solder joint.
   DMM to verify if connections are made [suspect joints do well with a little 'wiggle-testing'...lightly pressing on the component/trace in question to help surface any intermittent problems.
    An open or intermittent trace can usually be detoured around the breakpoint through a wire if you can find new traces or component leads which connect to the nodes or wire where the break occured.

[hambone795]

Thanks, I'm going to continue along assuming that I was just overreacting. I will make sure to pretin so that I don't overheat the board.