Cold Heat Soldering Tool

Creeping old age-itis forced me to give up doing stained glass. I'm happily switched over to beading and jewelry making, but have been frustrated when I wanted to do a little bit of soldering to close a jump ring or stabilize a bail, because my soldering station just isn't a safe place for me these days. And anyway, what a PITA to set up, heat up, and clean up a traditional soldering station just to put a weensy drop of solder on a jump ring!

I received a Cold Heat for Christmas and it is exactly what I needed. Yes, it is limited to small solder projects and it takes practice to get the tip and solder positioned properly. It is definitely not a substitute for a traditional soldering station, but its convenience, low cost and speed make it a real asset for hobbyists who occasionally need to make small solders. Even for someone who does real soldering, I could see it being a handy thing to have around for the occasional small job.

Those with no soldering experience may find it frustrating at first, but if you want to do small solders and are never going to get into using a full-sized soldering iron, this may meet your need if you just stick with it. You need one hand for the tool and the other for the solder, so put the piece you're soldering into a small clamp or jig so it won't skitter around. And don't TOUCH the piece after soldering. The tool may cool off quickly, but a freshly soldered piece of metal does NOT. Also, soldering fumes are definitely bad for your health, so VENTILATE.

Yes I got duped also. This thing didn't even melt the solder! I ordered three of them thinking they would make great gifts. Once I found out how pathetic these are I called them and wanted my money back. I said I would be happy to send them back for a refund. But they didn't even want them. they said keep them and they credited my account. So I ended up giving them as gag gifts! At least I got a laugh out of them!

This is a totally useless tool. It has failed at every application I have attempted. It looks so convenient and handy, but you will end up pulling out a real soldering iron if you want to do any work.
Should not even be on the market, typical TV hype product. A waste of batteries.

This is the worst tool of any sort that I have ever bought. After an entire hour spent trying to solder the negative wire of my car speaker to its post I destroyed this monstrosity beyond all recognition. Very Cathartic. I want 5 minutes alone with whomever invented this and charged me 13$ for it...

I tried to get this thing to work in a manner that even resembled adequate but to no avail. I'm not an expert when it comes to soldering but I've done it enough times to know what works and what doesn't. This is a waste of $20 and any time that you invest in trying to make it work.

However, after throwing it out I realized, almost immediately, that I had thrown out something valuable: the batteries.

1~ Heats by resistance at tip/workpiece junction, so heating is inconsistent depending on workpiece thermal mass, contact pressure, and surface conductance
2~ Tip has very puny thermal mass, is ridiculously fragile and grossly overpriced
3~ Reliable battery irons from other makers (eg Amazon item B0007IS2ZK) and butane irons are readily available.

ps: There's a reason this item listing keeps shifting around on Amazon. It's probably to conceal customer reviews from potential buyers.

I got this at Home Depot for doing some things on my computer. I got it and the very, very thin solder that they did not say you needed and I had to go to 4 different places. Then as I got home I sat down and started soldering and it would not give me a good joint. Then as i put the soldering iron into it's case furious that i only made a half decent joint the tip broke as I was puting into the section just for it.

Go get a normal soldering iron. It may be less safe but at least it works.

I've been using a ColdHeat tool regularly for six months and I can attest that it works very well for some jobs, but it VERY obviously does not replace a traditional soldering iron for many jobs. Once you undertand its limitations, you'll find that it's actually pretty handy.

The electric arc that it generates for heating makes it unsuitable for working on delicate electronic components. The nonstick tip makes it ineffective for tinning or desoldering and the nonstick tip and awkward shape combine to make it hard to place a drop of solder on a board with precision. It heats up quickly enough that it will quickly char solder and make it unusable if you dawdle.

When I used it to solder LEDs to a board, it destroyed them. DON'T USE THE COLDHEAT TOOL ON SENSITIVE ELECTRONICS.

BUT...

For simple jobs, this thing is unparalleled. I pull out my ColdHeat tool when I have to make a quick repair to a phone or to a CD player or to wire up a big switch.

This is a common repair: Securing a speaker wire that has come loose is a matter of touching the tip to the existing solder, which heats it to a liquid in about a second, at which point you place the end of the wire to make the joint and the job is done. It's almost too quick to believe.

You want to impress your girlfriend? Crack open her broken Walkman and resolder the earphone jack in under two minutes. That's the kind of job the ColdHeat is good for.

Yes, I broke a tip -- eventually. The tips are fragile, but if you are putting a lot of pressure on the tip then you are using the tool improperly. Also, it seems that over time the tip becomes more fragile, presumably from the rapid heating and cooling, and it will inevitably need replacement. My first tip lasted me 5 months.

It doesn't replace a soldering iron for every job, but the ColdHeat has its place in my toolbox and I'm very satisfied with my purchase.

I've bought hundreds of things on Amazon and thousands of things elsewhere. This is the first one to motivate me to review. The thing doesn't really work. You can see from the other reviews as well that it isn't a case of "dumb malcontent user error." The $9 replacement tip thing really does look like a scam, whether intended or not; that is what it amounts too.

Truly pathetic. Some lawyer must be looking into a class action lawsuit by now.

I doubt I will buy anything from Coleman from now on.

I want to believe that this thing works the way it is advertised. I purchased this after reading reviews in modder columns and magazines. People (not seen on TV) had tested this and said it worked well.

I was not able to get the same performance out of it. I am no stranger to soldering, and I could not get this thing to make a single joint. I tried lighter and lighter gauge solder, smaller and smaller joints. The best I could do is make some blobs of solder drop off the end of a length of solder.

The copy in the manual made sense (I am an engineer and saw nothing that defied the basic laws of thermodynamics, what I consider a sure tip-off that something is a scam), the rest of it all looked OK. It just didn't perform as advertised. Still I want to believe, I really do, but my dreams just won't come true.