First off, I've watched the EEVBlog soldering tutorials, of course, as well as quite a few other videos... but I'm still stuck!
I have and use:
* A 48 W temp-controlled soldering station - cheap, but it should do
* The above set to ~370 C (~700 F), most of the time
* 60/40 solder, 0.7 mm - I've had it for many years, though
* A rosin flux pen
* Solder wick w/ flux
The tip I've been using recently look something like
this - there's no proper chisel tip for my iron, so that's the closest I could get.
Okay, so on to the problem. There might be multiple, but one is that I find the solder "sticky". Despite flux, it bridges a VERY easily, even on SOIC-pitch pins (i.e. fairly large). Those bridges are pretty easy to remove (with the soldering iron tip, or solder wick if really needed), though. On finer-pitch devices, the results are, frankly, shit. I simply can't seem to solder one, at all.
In addition to the bridging, the solder also tends to "follow" the iron when I lift it out, causing spiky joints here and there.
One thing is most likely worth noting: all the practice soldering I've been doing has been on OLD boards (1995 or so), where I've "desoldered" brute force with a hot air gun. The results aren't great, as you'll see.
Here are a few pictures... embarrasing (bad alignment, tons of flux residue, bad joints etc):
In the first picture, note the "spiky" blob of solder connected to the second pin. It simply follows the iron when I lift it.
I can certainly do a bit better than the BQFP there, but the solder prefers to stay the way it looks there. ... and the bent leg happened while desoldering. Yes, it's ugly, but the board is garbage either way!
I can think of a few possible reasons:
1) Old, dirty boards
2) The "desoldering" process isn't exactly something I'd do on a board I care about - the entire area around the IC gets very hot, which might cause problems.
3) Incorrect soldering iron temperature for SMD work - I haven't tried lower (or higher) recently
4) Old solder (it looks brown-ish here and there on the roll)
Any advice?
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)