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Buy It And Try It: Cold Heat Soldering Iron

The cold heat soldering iron claims to be the world's first cordless, cool-touch soldering tool--it heats up to 800 degrees.

In seconds? Does it really work? That's what we wanted to know. So we bought one, and since the company says it repairs a guitar, we asked the characters at Skip's Music to try it out for us.

A regular soldering iron, it's just hot. The "cold heat" is supposed to work with an electrode, so it doesn't have to cool off.

And with his regular iron, repair supervisor D.J. Rosenblatt makes quick work of this broken audio equipment.

So now it's time to try the Cold Heat if we can ever get it out of the box.

"Ahhh. Gimmick," said Rosenblatt. "It might not create enough heat to melt the joint."

So D.J. put it to work on the broken audio mixer.

"Not really happenin' there," said Rosenblatt. "There are two contacts to make, and unless that's real square, it won't actually have the flowing of the solder."

But once we make "contact", the Cold Heat starts doing the job.

"It's definitely hot enough. You can see the solder's boiling," said Rosenblatt. "It is an effective tool out in the field. If you're away from an ac power source, this is a great tool to have. I'm totally impressed. I'm throwin' my stuff out now. I don't need it," said Rosenblatt.

But what about the big tests? In the commercial, they throw it in their pocket right after using it.

So he uses the cold heat, and says "cool to the touch," said Rosenblatt.

So thinking that D.J. might be used to the heat, I had to test it myself.

Ow! No, it actually is a little hot. It's not cool to the touch, but a little warm.

So it works, but I was burned. D.J. at Skip's Music says that it's good enough he could use it. But I wouldn't recommend touching it to your skin.

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