Saturday, June 27, 2020
Yet another repair job, this time involving solder!
“Are you ever going to finish repairing the clock?”
“Oh! I was waiting to see if you had any solder.”
“I thought I already told you I didn't have any, and that you were going to check your tool box.”
“Ah. Okay, let me do that.”
And so I found myself repairing an old-style alarm clock with the bells on top. It's not actually that old, having been manufactured in China some time in the last decade. The battery had died and leaked, causing some corrosion around the batter terminals. The corrosion wasn't coming off that easy, so last week (month? Day? Year? I HAVE NO CONCEPT OF TIME ANYMORE!) I soaked the back of the clock, which hosed the battery compartment, in vinegar overnight to clean up the corrosion. That worked beautifully, but some wires had come loose and needed to be resoldered.
The hard part of doing the repair? Finding a pair of wire strippers that wouldn't just cut the wire. The second hardest part? The actual soldering job. It had been way too long since I last used a soldering iron [Nothing worse than a programmer with a soldering iron. –Editor.] [Shut up, you! –Sean] but I managed to only burn one finger and resolder everything only twice. Not bad [If you say so yourself. –Editor] if I say so—[Shut up! –Sean].
Anyway, the clock has been repaired, it works, and we saved ourselves having to buy a new one.
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")