I'm sorry, I failed to mention that prior to my original posting I purchased a competitors replacement iron. It did not work. I received a refund, but left with an undependable soldering station I interchanged the nuts between handles. This didn't work either. I took the iron to a hardware store and neither the threads of the nut nor the handle matched any metric or other gauge they had. And of course the threads on the handle and nut don't match each other well which is the root of the problem.
There must have been tens of thousands of these units sold. Assuming there are more than a relative few units units affected, the manufacturer should have addressed this issue long ago. Perhaps they have. If so, how does one get the correct part? Meanwhile, I have plenty of thread tape.
