Soldering pot

Still can't believe this worked. I wanted to experiment with litz headphone cables as I had some leftover wywires stuff and of course you need a soldering pot to tin the wires. I'm kinda cheap nowadays so made my own.

Had to turn the heat to around 450C, the flux kinda boiled for a while but it settled down and managed to tin them pretty evenly. The big deal for me was using as little solder as possible and not melting several bars of solder for a few wires. Used my helping hands to keep the iron still.
The clay was pretty cheap and no heat was conducted to the outside.

 

When I've had to tin stranded enameled wire in the past, I just fluxed the ends and touched a big 'ol blob of molten solder on the iron to it. That usually worked reasonably well for me.