Wood Burner as a Soldering Iron?

[waltk]

Or should I invest some extra money and try to find a dual wattage one? I figure if the wattage is right to begin with, the dual wattage is unnecessary. Anyways, any help would be appreciated.

Corey,

Here's my 2 cents about the one you are looking at...  Weller is generally a long-established and well-regarded manufacturer in the soldering iron market.  However, you'll notice that the manufacturer's information for that particular model says "light-duty".  Weller makes that one, and another orange one in the same line that is 40-watt for casual/infrequent use.  I've had three of them (the 40-watt ones) and all three have failed.  One of them lasted a couple years (of light use), one lasted a couple months of moderate use, and the other failed in a couple weeks.  So if you buy one of these, don't expect it to last forever.  Also, the Weller brand replacement tips are kind of pricey.

On the plus side, when they worked, they worked well.  I would recommend a 40-watt iron over a 25-watt one.  It's a bit counter-intuitive, but it easiers to overheat (and possibly destroy) a component with a smaller wattage iron because it takes longer to solder a joint.  With the higher wattage iron (and a little practice), you can locally heat the area to be soldered very quickly before the heat has time to travel up the component leads.

Your suspicion about dual wattage being unnecessary is correct (IMO).