Soldering standards on YouTube

[CJay]

It can't be just me that twitches and is developing a nervous tic watching some of the soldering in repair, build or refurb videos on youtube surely?

I've been sat here today watching two different channels and one is telling me, while soldeirng abominably badly, that they solder like that to prevent dry joints, the other, yeesh, we used to call it pigeon shit soldering when I was a telly tech...

[tooki]

Nope, not just you. It seems to me that soldering, for some reason, is a thing that everyone wants to do a tutorial on, no matter how poor their skills are — and despite the presence of some excellent tutorials already (PACE, Dave, John Gammell).

[wraper]

Also when you mention that their soldering skills are crap, you get treated by others as if you are telling blasphemy. I once made a comment on this forum about Louis Rossmann soldering skills after he was mentioned by another member as example to learn from. Basically I told you could learn to repair but for soldering look somewhere else.  It resulted in shitfest  .

[SparkyFX]

It can't be just me that twitches and is developing a nervous tic watching some of the soldering in repair, build or refurb videos on youtube surely?

Depends on what your expectations are when watching such videos and if they match the intention of the creator. Of course this is different from learning a trade, there is plenty of content not mentioned and not put on a scale to know where it would be.
You could take them as one example, showing a few bits here and there, but not being a 100% art of the trade explanation. They don´t have to be that, as watching a video on youtube does not qualify you to do anything serious. It is not the same as passing an exam and knowing why this or that makes sense. An instructor might be able to judge if one might fail an exam by doing it as shown.

If you care about the broader implications of such videos... i reckon only people interested in the subject will watch them, and as such are usually not your concern, as they will try to improve their skills to meet the minimum criteria a job asks for - from an educational point of view. It is the ones that are not interested at all you need to be concerned of.

[wraper]

If you care about the broader implications of such videos... i reckon only people interested in the subject will watch them, and as such are usually not your concern, as they will try to improve their skills to meet the minimum criteria a job asks for - from an educational point of view. It is the ones that are not interested at all you need to be concerned of.

It spreads bad soldering habits. It does not take that much time and effort to learn soldering properly. Yet most of the people, many of them professionals with ton of experience, do completely shit soldering job.

[mikeselectricstuff]

The bad habit I see all the time is cleaning the tip before putting it back in the stand - old solder should be left on to prevent the tip oxidising.

[SparkyFX]

It spreads bad soldering habits. It does not take that much time and effort to learn soldering properly. Yet most of the people, many of them professionals with ton of experience, do completely shit soldering job.

Sometimes while repairing stuff that was made according to the art of the trade and then failed? Therein lies the catch of it. Even the million-$ Research and Development, the purchasing and the production make mistakes. The mistakes look different, but are still there. It wouldn´t need repair otherwise. Ok, and then there is abuse by user...

I agree, sometimes it looks ugly... in my job such work should not hit serial mass production of course, it would introduce new problems, give less predictability and as such would cause huge issues regarding the liablity. Because my requirements are half way obvious to me, it would simply be inacceptable. But anyway, i am not working in low voltage consumer electronics - their customers might be happy to have the device working again at a certain price, the rest is their liability. Shit soldering jobs that do not fail... are... still shit soldering jobs? I guess from an economic point of view they know how many customers come back. Aesthetics and functionality are two separate things anyway.

Thats why expectations matter when watching such videos, how obvious are the requirements of such a job to the individual viewer? The disclaimers at the beginning of the video should be warning enough.

[wraper]

their customers might be happy to have the device working again at a certain price, the rest is their liability.

This is not about the price. And actually doing shitty soldering job usually takes more time than doing good soldering job. And I've seen enough of bad hand soldering failing.

[bd139]

I've seen some hideous shit going around on YouTube.

I've seen some hideous shit going around in my short spell in industry a well. Straight off the wave soldering line and into the hands of a monkey to stick the rest of the parts in, burn and delaminate the board then try and toss it over to the conformal coating dudes and hope they won't notice. If it fails final test who gives a shit as long as you're down the pub at 12:00 ... my job to fix that shit for 3 months. In a bad week I could write my annual salary off! 

[Zero999]

Also when you mention that their soldering skills are crap, you get treated by others as if you are telling blasphemy. I once made a comment on this forum about Louis Rossmann soldering skills after he was mentioned by another member as example to learn from. Basically I told you could learn to repair but for soldering look somewhere else.  It resulted in shitfest  .

Fanbois see their favourite YouTube stars as superhuman role models. We even see hints of it on EEV blog, but it's not so extreme. Of course when someone bursts their bubble, fanbois get defensive, calling the person a troll, twat or whatever. The conversation goes like this.

Wow look at how good he is. He's an electronics god!

He can't solder though and his programming is very amateurish, with all of the spaghetti code in his previous project.

How darz u troll my favs YouTube star!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, some of his videos are really good, like the one where he explained Ohm's law: an excellent resource for beginners to circuit theory. It's just his soldering is shit.

Shut da fuck up, cunt!

OK whatever, sorry to burst your bubble, go back to your safe space and live in ignorance.

[bd139]

Sometimes it’s an personality cult problem. I actually had some shit on here from Rossman directly for criticising a repair rationale and approach.  How dare I threaten his revenue stream with logic 

“Dude throw the MacBook in the trash and get insurance next time, not spend $300 on BLR which fucks with the bus timing with bodge wires.  You will NEVER know if it’s trashing your data quietly. Your life’s photos are worth more than a new MacBook”

[langwadt]

Also when you mention that their soldering skills are crap, you get treated by others as if you are telling blasphemy. I once made a comment on this forum about Louis Rossmann soldering skills after he was mentioned by another member as example to learn from. Basically I told you could learn to repair but for soldering look somewhere else.  It resulted in shitfest  .

which is old since it seems to me Louis himself jokes about his soldering skills

[stevelup]

The bizarre US pronunciation of soldering as soddering makes my brain hurt. I mean, that L is most definitely there...

You don’t hod something, you hold it. You didn’t sod something when you sold it. So why do you sodder with solder.

 

[wraper]

Sometimes it’s an personality cult problem. I actually had some shit on here from Rossman directly for criticising a repair rationale and approach.  How dare I threaten his revenue stream with logic 

FWIW he quite often says his soldering skill is shit. IMO far from bad but certainly not to take example from. Tons of flux and a lot of unnecessary operations when things can be done much easier and with better result.

[wraper]

Also when you mention that their soldering skills are crap, you get treated by others as if you are telling blasphemy. I once made a comment on this forum about Louis Rossmann soldering skills after he was mentioned by another member as example to learn from. Basically I told you could learn to repair but for soldering look somewhere else.  It resulted in shitfest  .

which is old since it seems to me Louis himself jokes about his soldering skills

Yep, I said that too. But it did not help.

[Electro Detective]

The bizarre US pronunciation of soldering as soddering makes my brain hurt. I mean, that L is most definitely there...

You don’t hod something, you hold it. You didn’t sod something when you sold it. So why do you sodder with solder.

 

Too right mate    the solder vs sodder thing has been brought up a few times at this forum,
with 'Team Sodder' standing their ground no matter what grammar logic presented     


fwiw I've never heard the word soldier spoken as sodier in defence speak 

 

[Zero999]

It's strange how English has changed as it's spread around the world. I wonder when the l sound got dropped from solder? The Australians clearly pronounce the l but do the Canadians say it the US way?

[tooki]

look at: https://www.google.com/search?q=solder+etymology&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

The word solder comes to English from the French word soudure, with no L. As is usually the case where British and American English differ, American English tends to retain the older form.

Anyhow, the people still trying to lord their supposed superiority over Americans because of this can take our silent L’s and shove them where the sun don’t shine.

Or are you going to argue that L’s cannot be silent (or any other sound but L), in which case you’ll have to amend your pronunciations of walk, talk, colonel, etc??

You don’t hod something, you hold it. You didn’t sod something when you sold it. So why do you sodder with solder.

Have you listened to British English?!? Many, many, many British dialects (like Cockney, and a few American ones, like NYC) have the L vocalization shift, where the L becomes a vowel or semivowel. (Like “hold”->”howd”, rhyming roughly with “rowed”.)

P.S. guys, don’t try to argue with me on this. I’ve vowed to take NO shit about American English from snooty Brits (or Aussies or Kiwis or anyone else who tries to condescend on this topic), because 99.999% of the time, their attacks are based purely on disdain for USA, not on any kind of linguistic accuracy. (Did I mention I studied linguistics?) I’ve had these arguments with linguistically uninformed non-Americans too many times, and I won’t stand for them.

[bd139]

British English is totally screwed up. Even regionally.

[tooki]

Thank you!! Perfect example of why it gets my blood boiling when anti-American armchair linguists start proclaiming (with steadfast conviction, as Electro Detective demonstrated here) that letters in English must be pronounced, when in fact English (including posh British) is chocked full of silent letters!!!

[Electro Detective]

It's strange how English has changed as it's spread around the world. I wonder when the l sound got dropped from solder?

The Australians clearly pronounce the l but do the Canadians say it the US way?

FWIW I clearly remember Mr. Carlson's Lab on one of his Youtubes bringing up the point,
and how he as a Canadian says it as soLder

As an Australian that has always said (and used a lot of) 60/40 solder with an L on the roll, if it was spelled sodder and brought to my attention by anti or non anti Australian armchair linguists,
I would happily pronounce it as sodder and lose the L = hey, no problem 

[Brumby]

because 99.999% of the time, their attacks are based purely on disdain for USA

Count me in that other 0.001% then

[Zero999]

look at: https://www.google.com/search?q=solder+etymology&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

The word solder comes to English from the French word soudure, with no L. As is usually the case where British and American English differ, American English tends to retain the older form.

Anyhow, the people still trying to lord their supposed superiority over Americans because of this can take our silent L’s and shove them where the sun don’t shine.

Or are you going to argue that L’s cannot be silent (or any other sound but L), in which case you’ll have to amend your pronunciations of walk, talk, colonel, etc??

You don’t hod something, you hold it. You didn’t sod something when you sold it. So why do you sodder with solder.

Have you listened to British English?!? Many, many, many British dialects (like Cockney, and a few American ones, like NYC) have the L vocalization shift, where the L becomes a vowel or semivowel. (Like “hold”->”howd”, rhyming roughly with “rowed”.)

P.S. guys, don’t try to argue with me on this. I’ve vowed to take NO shit about American English from snooty Brits (or Aussies or Kiwis or anyone else who tries to condescend on this topic), because 99.999% of the time, their attacks are based purely on disdain for USA, not on any kind of linguistic accuracy. (Did I mention I studied linguistics?) I’ve had these arguments with linguistically uninformed non-Americans too many times, and I won’t stand for them.

Interesting. . .
Yes various dialects of English miss sounds out. In some parts, Paul, pool and pull are homophones. Dropping consonants is also fairly common, so hair becomes air, butter, bu'er, people, peo'le, backwards, ba'wards etc. There's also some overcorrection going on, where people will strongly pronounce the letter t in words, where it's silent or weak in perceived pronunciation i.e. button, Britain (in PR the t is silent), little, hospital (in RP the t sounds more like a k, but much softer) etc. or say the letter h twice, so Southampton becomes South hampton, rather than South ampton.

Don't get me started on language snobbery. Some Brits think they own English, when in reality no one does. It may be one of the most widely used languages, but as soon as it left old Blighty it changed and morphed on its travels so something else.

I don't think destain for US English is purely due to anti-Americanism. I've heard people describe the Australian accent as stupid and not proper English and the same is often said about Manchester dialects, by those living around London. I think a lot of is people prefer to listen to their local dialect and an admiration for the Queen's English.

Note, I've not studied linguistics, I just find it interesting.

[@rt]

Try recording yourself soldering first. Then talk.
(so long as the soldering in discussion is being done on camera).

[tooki]

Don't get me started on language snobbery. Some Brits think they own English, when in reality no one does. It may be one of the most widely used languages, but as soon as it left old Blighty it changed and morphed on its travels so something else.

Thank you. I’ve literally had Brits bark at me that “English is [their] language” and that I speak “American”, not “English”... it’s maddening, both from just how factually ignorant it is, but also just the sentiment behind it. (Note to non-linguists: if you have high mutual intelligibility in both spoken and written forms, it’s the same language, even if you do use different dialects. English absolutely meets this basic criterion, so American English and British English are simply dialects of “English”.)