I agree wholeheartedly with this.BMBteke397 wrote:I know I am a little late to this conversation, but when I was first learning to solder with PCBs I found the best way was to just practice. I found some old broken electronics around the house and would spend some time just removing and re-soldering components. Like was said before, getting a good speed is important to achieving a good finished product, and the best way to get that speed is just developing the muscle memory. So, for people who are new and afraid they might mess up something with their DMG board, I would say get some practice time on junk boards to get a feel for it. A few feet of solder used for practice will be a lot cheaper than replacing a bricked board from jumping the gun.
Second piece of advice would be to get a decent iron with some good tips. If a project like the Game Boy Zero scratches an itch for you and you see yourself doing some future projects, then a good iron will go a long way.
In regards to a good iron, I recommend getting a temperature-controlled soldering station and not just one that plugs straight into the wall. Many of the cheaper irons also can't heat up fast enough to heat some large joints or a large ground plane, which could be an issue as it leaves cold (brittle) joints behind. On the other side of the spectrum, the cheap non-temperature controlled irons could even be way too hot for a good solder joint - they can boil the flux that allows the solder to 'wet' nicely, and possibly injure you as the flux can spit.
The most common recommendation for a soldering station is the Hakko FX888D or the Weller WES51D - they aren't the cheapest, but you can get reliable performance and not get a broken iron right before your last joint. There are also plenty of cheaper clone stations on the internet that are marginally better than the plug-in irons, like the soldering station from HobbyKing (tip: wait a little bit before buying, the price goes down on the website).
But if it's a one-off job, like BMBteke397 said, it probably won't be worth your time to invest in a good station. However, soldering becomes more difficult to do properly with these irons and it'll take a bit of practice.
