Reviewer: Found on Ganoksin Orchid

05/19/2010 09:04pm

Dear Orchid,

I wanted to write and tell you about a product that I was introduced to recently from Cleverwerx. Karen Christians is the producer of a set of soldering tools made out of titanium that I have just fallen in love with, The minute I got them I noticed the light weight of these tools, a direct result of the titanium and was assured that solder wouldn't stick to them and they would be my last purchase of soldering tools I would need to make. They are pricey, I paid $152 for a soldering pick, a pair of soldering tweezers and a cross lock tweezer plus $7 shipping and handling. Now I had never thought of spending that much on those soldering tools and I can ill afford to piss my money away on tools that will not perform. But I make a living from my tools so they are very important to me and these are as promised, I love them. They have made my soldering bench less cluttered because I no longer have to search 5 pairs of tweezers to find the one that picks anything up. I don't have to have a set of tweezers and picks for the different metals I use, silver, white gold and yellow gold because the solders will not adhere to the titanium. I have used them for a month now with all three metals and wouldn't go back at any price. Usual disclaimer, I don't get anything from Cleverwerx except good tools for the asking price.

Reviewer: Helen Hill

05/11/2010 09:18pm

I used to use a pair of brass tongs for fishing things out of my pickle bath, but since I acquired a pair of Karen Christians' titanium cross-lock soldering tweezers, it's been a much more simple exercise.
I use them during soldering, then without the need for putting them down and remembering to pick up the brass/copper/plastic (or whatever folks use) tool instead, I simply use the same titanium tweezers to transfer the piece to the pickle bath. I can use them to lower the piece right to the bottom, without any splashes, and I can then use them to fish out any piece. A quick rinse in my rinse bowl of both the piece and the tweezers so as not to contaminate the next soldering phase with pickle, and we're good to go. Using them in this way, also means that my tweezers have no gunky flux build-up, which used to be a problem when I used steel tweezers for soldering, as I didn't want to dip them into the pickle. Also, the titanium tweezers are so well made and strong, that I never have to realign the ends - something I had to do often on my steel ones. Even though the Cleverwerx tweezers are so strong, they are also very precise, and so make picking up even the smallest jump ring or granule really easy. My brass pickle tongs were very large and clunky, so picking up such small items with those was virtually impossible.

In my opinion, they are worth the money, and I'd like to purchase another pair (just so I have two decent pairs when I need two pairs of tweezers for a job) and a titanium soldering pick - when I have some spare cash. Good tools are always worth investing in, and they will never need replacing.