Introduction: Soldering Iron Base (made With a Sardines Can)

By
About: I'm Mario Caicedo Langer (M.C. for short), a Colombian STEAM educator living in Azerbaijan, BSc in Naval Sciences, Master in Toy Design, and former Navy officer. I am a CAD and 3D Printing enthusiast and an ar…

(If you like this project, your votes are very appreciated. Thanks!)


Hello everybody! I'm back into the action! After all the excitement of working in a bulletproof vests factory, and then moving to Azerbaijan, now I'm living in Baku and trying to have a proper workshop here.

But I find this problem: Baku is a great city, but it's very complicated to find some things you need in your DIY life, especially electronics related things. I got a soldering iron, but I didn't find a good base for it. Ordering the stand on Internet is not a good idea, because shipping would be more expensive than the base itself. And I need it NOW! What can I do?

I found some ideas on Instructables (like this from Culturespy and this from jaime9999). Good and unexpensive. But I love shining things, so I used a sardines can.

Step 1: Materials, Tools and Safety

This base is easy to build and probably you will find all materials at home:

  • 1 metallic coathanger
  • 1 canned sardines
  • 1 nut
  • 1 bolt
  • 2 metallic washers
  • 1 iron piece (any with a hole good enough for the bolt. It's for extra weight)
  • 1 metallic pipe, for twisting the wire from the coathanger (its diameter must be bigger that soldering iron's metallic part, but smaller than the handle)
  • Tools: screwdriver and pliers

WARNING: In order to reduce risks of fire and/or fish-odorized Arduino projects, I strongly recommend to remove all the sardines from the canned sardines before starting this project. More info in Step 2.

Step 2: How to Remove the Sardines From the Canned Sardines

There is a time in the life of an author, when he has to apologize to his readers. It's my turn:

I'm sorry. I lied to you. I don't have any freaking idea if what I bought was sardines.

Everything here is in Azeri, Russian and Turkish. No English. Spanish is absolutely useless. And the perfect can for this project had all the info in Cyrillic. No fish drawings or any clue. So I ate that oily thing, because I'm not ok with wasting food and I needed the can. The flavor? I wasn't sure. After that, I called a friend who is a professional translator), I read to him what I saw in the label: "Cekymapur". He laughed for ten minutes and then he called Emergencies.

Nevermind, You just open the can, eat the content, remove the cover, and wash the can with boiling water and soap (be careful with can's sharp edges and water's high temperature. Wearing rubber gloves is a good idea.)

Step 3: Twist the Coathanger

Open the coathanger. Using the pliers, cut one of the deformed parts. Then twist the wire around a hard pipe. I used a metallic one from an electric fan stand.

Step 4: Shape the Spring

Remove the spring from the metallic pipe. In one of the ends, make a small loop, so you can pass the bolt through it and attach the spring to the base.

Step 5: Bring the Can

Make a hole in the can. I used a screwdriver and the pliers (yes, I'm cheap: I don't have a hammer. Deal with that). Be careful of not doing it over a surface you can spoil, like your Grandma's soviet time dinner table. Learn from my mistakes.

Step 6: Assemble the Base

Pass a bolt through the loop in the spring, the hole in the can and the extra iron piece. If you want, you can add more weight. A few days after I published this instructable, I found a metallic piece in front of a garage, so I attached it to the base for extra weight. Fasten it with the nut. Don't forget the washers for a better assembly. Check the position of the soldering iron and make adjustments.

Now you have a good and cheap stand for your soldering iron. Next instructable: how to learn Russian.