flux on Dumbo's tracks--I'm a fool to do your dirty work, oh ye-ah!
2016-11-10 by alan00463@...
Recall that I had chemically plated my board with bottom tracks using something like Tinnit chemical that I had got in powder form from allelectronics.com.
Today while soldering through-hole resistors, I discovered the soldering
iron burns the tinnit off the tracks. YUCHH! After the resistor was soldered in, I experimented to see if I could melt fresh solder onto the tracks to cover over the exposed copper. Didn't work. I first had to put rosin soldering flux onto the track, and then apply solder to it. (But before that, because the room in which I solder has the window open, the air was in the 50's F and my flux was gelatinous. So I had to first heat it up in a bowl of boiling water 5 min. or so until I could dip a toothpick into the flux and have a drop of flux cling to the toothpick.)
Then I discovered I could get the leftover flux off my tracks by spraying isopropyl alcohol onto the tracks and wiping it with a q-tip (cotton swab).
If anybody has a trick to avoid this mess, I'm all ears. (Dumbo, get it?)