Sunday, January 04, 2015

Free wooden tongs for soldering

Soldering tongs

When soldering bits of brass or nickel silver together, avoiding burnt fingers ranks almost as high on my list of desirable outcomes as fitting the parts together properly. To whit, I've a fine collection of bits of wood, lolly sticks and forks from the chip shop that I use to keep fleshy bits away from hot metal while at the same time holding said metal in place.

Last week, while lunching with a friend in Wagamama, a Japanese noodle bar chain, I spotted another candidate for my toobox - a rather nifty wooden easy chopstick device for children.

While paying the bill, I asked if I could, despite obviously not being a child, have one of these. Generously I got two. Not bad for a 3 quid tip.

Snacksticks, to use the trade name, are a simple set of tongs supplied are a pair of die-stamped pieces of wood. To use, you assemble the tool, following the instructions on the outside of the packet if required (although if you need them you probably also have to be told not to stick them in any other bodily orifice than your gob).



Nifty, and a definite addition to my toolkit. There's probably a market for these too - trouble is the supplier will only sell them in boxes of 1000 and even I don't do enough soldering to require that many. There's no price on the website (look under "on the table/cutlery/snackers & snackstick") but I doubt they will be expensive per unit.

If anyone fancies stocking up on them, I'll have a couple more as a thank you when you become rich...

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