Soldering frustrations

This year I turn 50. I was taught how to solder when I was 10, so I know how to do it, but I have some sort of nervous condition where I can't hold my hands still for more than 3 seconds. If you know any thing about golfing, it is like a permanent case of the yips.

All my life, this has been a frustration. Things weren't so bad when everything was mounted on a big piece of metal and all that had to be soldered was wires to lugs or tube mounts (what would be said then was my soldering was sloppy), but when these little tiny boards came along assembled by Japanese women with tiny hands, I was all done.

I can't even assemble a kit any more.

For a few years, I would bring small repair jobs to an old man I knew. The first time he looked at me funny when I told him my problem, and then he *got* funny when I said to him one day, "Could you please solder this part from this to that for me?" He says to me, "You think that will fix it? You know, I'm not going to fiddle with this thing all day if it doesn't work." I asked him again to go ahead and do it and he was very surprised when it began to work again.

So I never had any more trouble out of him. He was nice enough to do what I asked him to do. But then he died. And I moved and now I am back to trying to do it myself again with cold joints galore.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this pencil soldering with clamps or something? I have tried to use several different types of alligator clips, but cripes, it takes me 20 minutes to work out how to hold three different things to make a 30 second solder. Solving the clamping problem takes 10 times longer to solve than anything else.

I'm open to ideas.
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Relevant Pages

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