Whats the most tedious part and how do you make it easier?

[Pushtone]

The most tedious part for me is stripping component leads with steel wool before soldering them in.
Does anyone know where I could buy a machine (like a pencil sharpener) that could do this quickly?
I had a look on the web but haven't seen anything like this.

So I'm playing around with a DIY solution for this and I'll post it if it works. Right now I've got a piece of 600 grit sand paper wrapped up in a sponge and crammed into a copper tube. But surface contact is not always total,... yet.

What do the you find tedious and have you come up with any innovative solutions?

[sta63bmx]

I just put them in and solder them up.  Are you not getting any flow?  What wattage iron are you using?  I scuff the PCB with a dobie pad after I clean the PNP blue off with acetone, but that's about as far as my prep work goes.  I use a 60W Weller at full power and I get good solder flow. 

[deadsnake]

That what I do too. Acctually I never heard of nobody doing this. I once bought a cheap dollar store soldering iron. I lasted 10 min after I pluged it in (no joke). Then I went to this store and I bough another one from an unknown brand. I lasted a bit longer for about 15. Then I got pissed returned the last one( the first one I didn't bother returning because it costed me 3 bucks, well you get what you pay for) and I bought the best soldering iron I could find which was not as espensive as I thought it would be. I costed about 19 bucks. Man..... the soldering part it's the crucial part of any project, it's when you connect things to work. So if they aren't connected together then it's no use even if it's right. 

[H.Manback]

I'm not sure if it's the iron, the type of solder or that the components are 30 years old and oxidized as hell, but it's not supposed to be necessary to clean off the leads by sanding them

Imagine production work where you have to clean every single lead...

First off, are the leads all dark and dull (not shiny) and to they look just basically oxidized? If not there is no need to clean them.
Second, what kind of iron do you have? A regular 15 wattish iron or maybe a soldering station? If the iron doesn't get hot enough, that might be the problem. Also do you have your soldering skills down? You need to heat the joint by making a heating bridge with a little bit of solder on the iron, and wait a little bit before adding more solder to let that flow into what is going to be the joint. If you experience difficulty getting the solder to flow on the lead, that might be the reason.
Third, what kind of solder do you use, 60/40 or 63/37 is what you need.

[Noplasticrobots]

I never scour the component leads. Hell, I never scour the PCB. I've never had any problems. the only components I'd consider scouring leads on are some 30 year old transistors I have. The leads on those look like rusty nails.

The most tedious part of any project for me is wiring. I'm in the middle of wiring up a Fetzer Valve and I'm lost in a jumble of wires and I'm being accused of having torrets syndrome.

[Ge_Whiz]

For me, the worst part is marking out and drilling the case. Dull and tedious, and at this time of year, cold.

[Toney]

The off board wiring. For some reason all that stripping and fiddling just totally $h#ts me...

[JimRayden]

The off board wiring. For some reason all that stripping and fiddling just totally $h#ts me...

I'm with you, Toney. High five!

----------
Jimbo

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

A couple of times in my life, I have had bulk lots of old components that didn't solder (tarnishing). Once it was a box of 1N34 ge diodes, the others were old caps. but, in my experience, it's a pretty rare phenomenon. old pcbs, that's another thing, though. get out the wire brush..
As for wiring, there's a reason why the commercial builders use as much board mounted pots & sockets as possible. the 'wake up call' to me, was when my soldering assistant refused to do any more wiring... now my builds are on two boards (one for pots, one for sockets) linked by a ribbon cable. Increased reliability, too.

[smank]

I think like Toney: off board wiring is very tedious!
Sometimes I try to design a new pcb to eliminate or reduce it, but it needs more effort... You must place the pots and jacks hole with high precision... So I choose a traditional wiring of my boards.

[sta63bmx]

I will chime in with you guys on the offboard wiring.  LOLRUS @ the guy who said the drilling was cold.  I know the feeling, but now I work at the kitchen table when my wife isn't looking.  But yeah, the offboard wiring is annoying.  Here are a couple things I do that help me keep it straight.

1. Testing: I just have a set of jacks wired together along with a battery clip grounded to them and the red wire free, so I have one ground, input and output tips, and my 9V power.  I solder them to whatever board to test it and then when it works, desolder the jacks and clip and I'm left with the pots and I stick it in the box.

2. Pot wiring: So far I have just been making tonepad builds, and he usually has all three leads hooked to the board.  I cut three differently colored pieces of wire, twist them tight in a drill, and then solder one end to the board.  After that I see about how long to make it in the box, and then cut, strip, and solder the wire to the pot.  Looking at the top of the board I might go blue/grey/yellow and make sure the pot is face down while I wire it so I get the order correct.  Once my pots are on the board, I'm ready to check it and then stuff it in the box.

3. LED wiring: I bring the 9V power off the jack and straight to the board, and I run it by the LED.  I cut the LED leads short, use loops to put my resistor on the LED, solder them together, and then have the loop on the free end of the LED close to the power wire.  I just melt the insulation in one spot and pull a bit off with needlenose pliers.  Then I put the resistor loop on there and solder it for one less wire.

4. Grounds: Everyone who gets tied to the star ground, I just cut a long piece of black wire and solder it to the jack ground, board ground, switch ground, whatever.  Right before I put the battery clip on, I strip about 1/2" on the input jack ground (my "star ground") and bend a 90 deg. angle in the last 1/8" or so.  I find a convenient place to nest all the wires and then bend them all so that I can strip and bend a small loop on the end of each one.  I connect them all to the "star ground" and then solder it up and put some heatshrink or tape on it.

5. Battery placement: If I only have one footswitch, I try to make it close enough to the wall of the box that if I have some wire running back there, I can jam the battery between the switch body and the wall.  I don't like velcroing a clip in there and I don't wanna pop rivet one in, either, cause I don't like making holes in the box.  Call me lazy. lol

6. In-box wiring: Using all solid-core wire is a habit I picked up in the lab, not sure why.  I GREATLY prefer solid-core wire since it stays where you put it and doesn't wick solder up into the wire and then break off right when you need it.  You have to be deathly careful not to strip with too small of a hole on the cutters and put a notch in it, because then it always breaks.  It also holds the board solidly in place.  I use 22 AWG and drill everything on the PCB with a 0.030" bit.  The downside is that the wires from the pots get really stiff when they're braided, so it's not as cooperative moving stuff around.

This was the first build I put in a nice box.  The wiring is a little sloppy, but I like it long enough that I can pull the baord out to work on it without desoldering.  I tried the velcro here, unhappy with that.  It's just a tonepad microamp in the white toadworks box.  Looks like a marshmallow.  The twisted pot wiring is hidden.




This is more typical, sloppy hackage.  This got annoying because it was built, wanted to mod it, mod it more, blah blah blah.  With every stage, cramming more junk in there got more and more annoying.  TS-808 with a few parts changes and a boost/more drive footswitch.




I did this as I went and it got annoying.  No planning ahead here.  These steel-stud boxes rule, though.  Hack away!  Freebies!  I tack-welded the corners to stiffen it up without rivets.  I making this for-real for another guy, and I'm going to use ribbon cable for all the pots, diode switch, and bright switch.  As much as I dislike stranded wire, multi-conductor telecom wire or ribbon cable is so compact...

I would also like to give a shout-out to http://www.effectsconnection.com as the place where I have gotten LEDS, pots, jacks, switches, and enclosures.  I have ordered from Small Bear and FX connection and gotten excellent service from both.  Effects Connection has a narrower selection of parts by far, but they've got all the hardware.

[bluesdevil]

Like a lot of people who responded, offboard wiring is the least fun for me too.... especially without a wire stripper. I found that preparing the various lengths of wire for soldering all at once does help, but it still seems too much like work to me. I'm currently doing up a sick multi-effect pedal right now and can't seem to finish it because I'm dreading the wiring.... maybe it's just time for a break from this hobby, lol!!

[343 Salty Beans]

I strip my solid-core wire with my teeth.

Sure, my parents spent a bunch of money on braces, but solid-core STAYS PUT. I love it.

And to answer the question, offboard wiring gives me hell. Somehow I manage to weave all the wires from each pot, jack, and switch into an elegant knot. Then, just as I manage to untangle them, I break them off the board from all the twisting.

If I get my digital camera fixed, I'll post my very SHAMEFUL wiring job I did on a Lofo.

[dave_neal_59]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only teeth stripper out there.

I really hate getting the pedal into a box.  Right now I have about 6 little octopuses (octipi?) all wired up and waiting for homes in finished metal boxes.  I suck at and hate finish work, but I am not satisfied my plain aluminum boxes with Sharpie labels (no slight intended to anyone who has posted pictures of such - mine look exactly the same).    The prepainted boxes from smallbear were a godsend, but I still can't come to grips with a labeling/graphics scheme.

[Pushtone]

... it's not supposed to be necessary to clean off the leads by sanding them
Imagine production work where you have to clean every single lead...

Didn't mean to indicate I was having soldering problems. I'm not.
But now I'm reeling that I DON'T HAVE TO CLEAN LEADS?

I hope you all can excuse my ignorance. I am a total devotee of GGG ( that's right JD -  YOU CREATED ME ) and here is a snipet from the GGG Orange Squezzer build instructions...
     
"Prepare the parts for mounting. Use #000 steel wool or a piece of a new clean dry Scotch-Brite pad to clean the leads on the diode, transistors, resistors and capacitors. This will also make soldering the parts much easier."

The OS-1 was my first pedal and I've beed following JD's instructions since.

[Paul Marossy]

It's all tedious for me! 

[burnt fingers]

#1 for me is offboard wiring followed a close second by testing.  I have to go across the room to my amp so It's always a paint in the a#$. Half the time i forget to unplug the guitar cable when i have to go back to the work tabel and yang something loose.

Scott

[deadsnake]

A way to makethe wiring job easier is to use teminal blocks to hold the wires in place instead of soldering them. You solder them directly on the PCB and insert the wire in the side hole and just screw the screw on top of it to firmly hold it. huahuahua. The good thing is that if your need to repair it some day you don't need to desolder the wires, and it gives a nice finish to the PCB. They can be bought in a lot of configurations of wire sockects from 2 to "who knows how many". It get's easier to mesure the wire inside the stompbox either making it less messy. you all should try it.

here they are

http://www.electroniccomponents.globalsources.com/gsol/I/Terminal-block/p/2000000003868/3000000157668/sm/1001136864.htm

[calpolyengineer]

Although offboard wiring is quite a chore, I think I'm going to have to vote for cramming all of that stuff into a tiny box. It really is a "paint in the a#$" as Scott would say.

-Joe

[H.Manback]

... it's not supposed to be necessary to clean off the leads by sanding them
Imagine production work where you have to clean every single lead...

Didn't mean to indicate I was having soldering problems. I'm not.
But now I'm reeling that I DON'T HAVE TO CLEAN LEADS?

I hope you all can excuse my ignorance. I am a total devotee of GGG ( that's right JD -  YOU CREATED ME ) and here is a snipet from the GGG Orange Squezzer build instructions...
     
"Prepare the parts for mounting. Use #000 steel wool or a piece of a new clean dry Scotch-Brite pad to clean the leads on the diode, transistors, resistors and capacitors. This will also make soldering the parts much easier."

The OS-1 was my first pedal and I've beed following JD's instructions since.

Hmmm, I can imagine that cleaning the leads might help, but seriously, leads are pre tinned from the factory, and the only situation where you can't solder them easily is if they are oxidized. Cleaning the leads of every component would drive me nuts, so I just do not do it. The only time it was necessary for me was when using 30+ year old germanium transistors, and even then I didn't even solder them but used a socket.

As for the most annoying thing, wiring for sure! I'm using some stripped telephone cable now, and it is solid core. The problem is that the insulation is a absolute nightmare to strip