Cheap isn't bad in this case because of the iron: it gets hot and melts solder. Many people including myself learned on $10 radio shack irons. What people like

Cheap isn't bad in this case because of the iron: it gets hot and melts solder. Many people including myself learned on $10 radio shack irons. What people like adam savage are overlooking in their explanation is details, in this case, cheap irons dont have the selection of tips you need. To most people "cheap soldering iron" is what you get at home depot now which has a tip the width of a pencil, hardly suitable for component soldering. Also, here is another tip, adjustable temperature is not needed, its a useless feature. You want to get heat into a component and off. You'll fry a component more quickly if you heat it up a million times at a lower temperature setting trying to solder that pulldown resistor to the huge ground plane. In the end, your temperature setting will always be at maximum and you'll just need to hit it quick with the iron: on and off. Along those lines, a the perfect iron has no temperature setting but can sink alot of heat into a component. Metcals are 40W or 80W in power and are used extensively to solder 0402 and below. The tips come in different heat settings but are really meant for leaded vs. non-leaded solder which flow at different temps. Overkill? no, again, get the heat in, flow the solder and off as quick as possible even when you are soldering to a plane.