Sigh.... Been wanting to put this in but put it off for sanity's sake. Screw it, maybe someone will learn something and avoid the embarrassment.

I have owned a Hakko 808 for almost a year now. I love it. I will never sell it. I cannot do board work without it. One day, it ceased to work. It had been intermittently weak for a few days but then it just quit altogether. After running the cleaning rod through for the thousandth time, I decided to look a little deeper. Watched some utube vids on how to clean the pumps. Easy day. Done and done. Damn thing still won't suck! As I roll it around in my hand for the hundredth time, I see that the screen behind the removable part that holds the old solder is very dirty. So I take a fresh cotton swab with a little 97% on it and go to scrub it. And it starts to disintegrate. And I realize that it's a filter. And I suddenly recall a little packet of four of them in the case I haven't looked in since I bought it. Took my tweezers and a pick and extracted the remainder of a VERY filthy and quite original paper/cotton filter. Put in a new one. Sun of a gun works like a champ now. The whole time as it got dirtier, the stupid filter looked for all the world like a little metal screen. See what I get for never looking in the manual?

Drunken sailor's creed - I am man, the world is my urinal..

When replacing light sockets, I'll take off the old solder with my Hakko 808 and then use it like a soldering gun to ground the new one.

So, since I have gone "pro" and am starting to show some decent sales, I figured the better tools were in order. I thought I would start with some .156 crimpers since those always seem to be the toughest for me to do well, especially when I do two wires at once. Spent over $350 for the best Molex has to offer. Decided they were the greatest crimpers ever, despite being a huge PITA to load a crimp into.
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After a week or so and over 100 crimps I figured out that the crimp holder swiveled out.
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"Directions are for idiots."

The tips of my fingers have thanked me plenty. The thought that another may benefit drives me. Isn't that what this is all about?

I've long since gotten over the fact that 99.9% of the pins on the "Project pins here, C/L, ebay, etc" will not be near me, but hope springs eternal! So when I see there are 35 new entries since I last visited I'm like "hell yah!" And then I see its just a bunch of pinheads having a discussion about this or that and I'm like "CRAP!" And then I join the discussion. Probably pissing off someone else who sees a bunch of new entries...

Got a song for you....

Yes, I am old. Get off my lawn!! LOL

Rhythm. Always a great word for "hangman" games.