[Elecraft] Torroids?

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Concerning the solder blob method for removing the enamel and tinning
leads:

I never got this to work while building the base K2.
72 de Benjy
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It has a lot to do with having a hot enough iron. 

I know that the "toroidguy" uses a solder pot. But that's not something
to be careless with, having a large amount of molten solder around .

I found it easiest to strip the enamel. I don't know about the heavier
wire for the KPA100, but the K2 toroids used wire whose enamel simply
fell off with little effort. I used a moderately sharp edge (NOT a sharp
knife!) pressed against the enamel and then pulled the wire over the
edge. It "popped" the sleeve of enamel loose from the wire and it came
off in one or two passes leaving clean, shiny copper and no visible mark
on the wire. Then I tinned the bare lead with my regular small iron. 

The problem with a "nick" in the wire is that any tiny movement caused
by vibration, handling, etc., will cause the wire flex more at the nick
instead of spreading the movement evenly over the whole length of the
lead. The wire may eventually crystallize and break at that point some
day. 

I have worked with enamel covered wire where this method did not work at
all well. One had to scrape/sand every millimeter of the enamel off.
That's a lot more work and requires care to avoid nicking the wire.  In
those cases I get out the big iron and have at it with plenty of heat. 

Ron AC7AC
K2 # 1289