So welcome back to the shop friends. So today I thought I'd share with you the correct method for soldering wires. Soldering, of course, is the, in my opinion, is the best way to connect wires. Many of us may be default to these little guys. We've seen these little automotive style connectors in there. And, well, they're not great. Just go look at your trailer after a couple of years of being outside using these. They're not ideal. The ideal way, though, is to solder. It's a little intimidating. I think by a lot of folks, because maybe you don't have the equipment or you have bad luck with it. I'll show you how easy this is to do with just a tiny handful of tools. And I'll show you, let's go into the kit right now. There's really just a few things you need in your kit. And it's worth $100 or so. You can put together this kit that will serve you for a lifetime. You'll be able to repair electronics and different things that many, often times we just throw it away, because it's not worth the trouble of trying to find someone to fix it, little things that come loose. I think it's worth it. So, just get yourself a soldering gun. Just don't get anything fancy. Just these well-wellers are good. They're probably in the, I don't know, $40, $34 range, not very much. You want some rosin-paste flux. You want a little brush and some rosin-core solder. You don't want to use a solder used for plumbing. It's not the right stuff. And this right here, this stuff's amazing. This is a 3M silicone dielectric grease type of thing that we use as well as good selection of shrink tubing. So, let's show you how to prep it. And then we'll go through the whole process here. Do yourself a favor and get a couple of these alligator clips that you don't have to have those fancy stands. If you're just doing this once in a while, take two alligator clips and clamp them in your vice like this. Now, some of these alligator clips have a pretty tight spring on them. So, take some shrink tubing on the ones you're going to keep in your kit and just melt it on there. And that way they won't mess up your wire. And this is going to hold things securely. You're just going to get a whole lot, a whole lot better job. Okay, so for joining the wire, there's a couple different ways of doing it. But what I have found to be the best, and this is what Granddad always did it, is you spray the ends of the wire like this. You kind of spray them out like this and join them into the intermingle, kind of mesh like it fingers together. And pinch one side like this here, and start bringing everything together. And then twist, twist this side here, and then twist this side over here like that. And that's going to give you the cleanest, the smallest, because we're going to shrink. If this is going to be something that's exposed, and we're going to put our shrink tubing on there, it's going to be a little more low profile and look a little better. Now we can clamp it into our jaws and get everything ready for the solder. I don't think I mentioned you want to damp sponge to, any sort of old worn out sponge would be fine. Now with everything ready, you're going to take your rods and flux, right? And we're going to apply that on there like that. So just coat that on there, and that's going to help that solder to bind. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have heated that up first. And then we're going to get our soldering iron and untangle the cord that hooks on everything. OK, so this shouldn't take long to heat up. So what we're going to do is we're going to put that on there like that just until that flux starts to melt in that rosin, and it starts to melt down inside the wires there, right? And then, and then, granted, I always said you touched that, the end of that there, to tin it. I don't know why I just always have. And we're going to heat from the bottom, and we're going to start heating that up until this melts. Now we don't want to touch the solder to the iron. Well, that took a long time to heat up there. There we go. Now it's, now it's sucking in there. Just like that. We don't put so much on there that it's going to drip off, and don't try to dribble it on there. That could probably use a little bit more right there. There we go. That's all. That solder joint looks pretty good. Now remember, this is marginal advice, so take it for what it's worth. Now we want to water proof this. This is what we're going to use, the 3M silicone paste. Having this in your shop, any time you put together electrical connectors or anything like that is so good. And we'll just put a little bit of that on there, like that. And then now we're going to do our shrink tubing. Now I'm going to use a piece of clear shrink tubing just so you can kind of see what's going on, and what a great connection that this is. So what we can do here is, once we have that grease on there, now we'll thread our shrink tubing on here, like this. And try to be careful to hold that, not to scrape all that silicone grease off there. And just place it like that. Now your shrink tape is going to shrink on the ends about 10%. So I'm always pretty liberal with that, and give myself plenty of shrink tubing. Now you can use a, I'm going to use a heat gun. You don't have to use a heat gun. You can use a lighter, you can use a torch. Problem with the lighter in the torch is if you're not really careful, they will, it will tend to burn the wire in the housing. Start from the middle. You're going to start from the very middle, and you'll see that that's starting to shrink right there. And then work to the outside edges. And you'll see, I think you can see, you'll see that silicone making that seal as it, as the shrink tape tightens around the connection. And it, ideally, you want it to squeeze out like that side right there. Probably should have put a little bit more on the housing, but that looks pretty good right there, actually. Now once that's cool to the touch, you can clean that, clean that silicone off there. And you have a really good, as good as you're going to get a waterproof connection for joining two wires together, that's probably going to be tougher than the wire itself. So that's all there really is to it for connecting those. And that, again, that's going to be your best connection. If you can take a little bit more time and you can solder these with a shrink tape instead of using those blue automotive style connectors, you're most likely not going to have to go back and redo your electrical work. Especially for stuff that's going to be sitting outside like trailers or especially boat trailers or there's a lot of water and spray on those. And it's pretty hard on electrical stuff. So what I'm going to do, so also I was going to add, so a lot of folks have been asking, what happened to Wrangler Mart? Wrangler Mart was our Amazon affiliate store where I put the things that I like. People often ask, what do you recommend, what do you like for? What's that shirt or what pocket knife you like or what camera equipment you're using? And then they shut down the stores. Well, we've got a new one now. They've started a new program and I will put a link to that down in the subject heading. The Wrangler Mart dot com will eventually go over there. I'm forwarding those addresses. So what I'll do is, because I know I get a lot of questions about this, I'll do affiliate links. Affiliate links are a way for us to support the channel. If you buy something on Amazon that I feature in the video, we get a small percentage from that and helps us to fund the channel. It doesn't cost you anymore than what you'd normally pay for it for, but it's just a way of helping creators out. So what you're going to want for your electrical kit, just basic stuff is a soldering iron. I'll put one there that's a good quality and not too expensive. And a heat gun, when you're buying a heat gun, I make sure you get one that stands on its own. It's got some feed on it. Like this one here will sit like this on your bench. That way you can work on it hands free. So if you're heating stuff or like that to have two hands and having it, so you don't have to clamp it in the vice, it's actually pretty nice. So those are the two main things right there. I'll put the flux, the silicone paste. You definitely want some of that. That's a must have. That's like the WD-40 of electrical work and solder and shrink tape. If I was going to add to that, I would invest in a pair of good strippers. Wire strippers are very nice. They'll pay for themselves on it if you have a small project and some good crimpers and nippers. And that's about it. So I'll put together that kit for you on the store. So thanks for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video.