When I tin a wire, I hold the iron on the bottom, and feed solder from the top. The solder flows to the heat.

Quick and easy...

But you do need to practice, all of soldering requires some practice.

The larger the gauge, the more difficult it is to work with. If you can practice with smaller wires, it will help you develop the techniques. That should make working with larger wire easier.


As far as irons. The 60w and up ceramic element ones work very well. I use my Trakpower TK-950 at work now... It does just fine. I use the largest tips when soldering larger gauge wires.

The FX-888 is a 65w iron... It should have plenty of power to do the job.

So long as it can hold the temp well, and you use the correct sized tip. But it is a smaller iron handle, and therefore the tips do not have a lot of mass. That will make technique more important when working with large wires.