Desoldering braid does work well.  I think the braid has flux on it to draw the solder in.  In a pinch, I have used stranded wire dipped in rosin flux in much the same way. I usually have some extra wire around for that purpose. And, since it is basically junk wire, it's free.

Ed

Before this stuff came out I use to strip the braid off of surplus RG174 coax. Stretch out the braid and dip it in liquid rosin flux. Wipe of the excess with paper towel and coil it up into a 35mm film container. Worked very well. The manufactured stuff was welcome substitute.

Rich

Appreciate the post.  Presuming that if done correctly, some solder remains to hold your joiner in place?

My ideal is to completely fill the rail joiner with solder without necessarily leaving any solder visible on the side of the rail.  I said "ideal".  What I found in practice is that I left lumpy gobs of solder on the side of the rail.  The desoldering braid gave me a  easily controlled method for removing the "gobs".  I've since switched to a finer size of solder and make a greater effort to keep my soldering tip clean.  Life is for learning

I took some into Leslie Eaton's Modeling with the Masters class at the convention and was glad I did - it assisted in cleaning up a couple inadvertant solder junctions I'd made.

Of course, for the serious jobs where you wanted to pull the part out, there was the vacuum desolderer... nice.

Copper & Brass Desoldering Brad has been around since before World War 1 and was used while building Aircraft and on nearly all early electronics it was also used as Ground wires and for antenna connections.

No I wasn't around back then but my Grand father was and he introduced it to me in the 1960's.

Dan

I think it originated with British military techs in the mid 1900's, but I could be mistaken.  It seems they did as Rich already mentioned, used coax braid and dipped it in resin flux.

It works well, but I like my de-soldering vacuum too.

Little history blurb.

Make that more like  WWII. Not much electronics around in WWI.  Planes in WWI  where more paper and wood with no electronics at all.  1901 is the first wireless communication, cross Atlantic, by Marconi.  1902 is the first land to ship communication and the 1917 sinking of the Titanic, the first credited reported of using wireless communication to save lives at sea.

So wide spread electronics are more WW2.

Marc Fournier, Quebec

Ernst Sachs, founder of ERSA (a name comprised of the beginning letters of his first and last names) contributed to this development. In 1921, more than 80 years ago, he developed the first electric and mass-produced soldering iron for industry.

I suppose it's possible that no one tried de-soldering until the electronic age, but I doubt it.  Soldering has been around for four or five thousand years.

Still, I agree more like mid 1900's than early 1900's is likely.

A solder wick on a reel

Close up to the netting of a solder wick

A solder wick soaked with solder. The black spots are impurities

A solder wick, also known as a desoldering wick or desoldering braid, is a roll of fine, braided 18 to 42 AWG wire typically made from oxygen free copper that has been treated with a rosin solder flux.

The processes of removing solder with a wick start by placing the wick over the solder joint to be removed and then heating the portion of the wick in contact with the joint with a soldering iron. As the rosin melts onto the wick and the connection and the solder reaches its melting point the solder is sucked into the solder wick via capillary action. Heat is then removed and the solder is allowed to solidify before the wick is removed from the workpiece. Finally, the used section of wick is discarded.

The product was developed after the Second World War by Army Air Corps (probably British Army AAC) technicians who would strip the copper braid from coaxial cable, dip it in solder flux and then utilize it for desoldering.^{[citation needed]} Today, it is used as the most common method of removing solder from printed circuit boards in both surface mount component and through hole component applications.^{[citation needed]}

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