I mean, a smell is temporary unpleasant but what happened to my health here? I am a former smoker, so I guess damage was previously done there.
This specific iron is a portable one (I had it hooked up on a powerbank), with temperature control and FOSS firmware. It was lead-free soldering tin with flux included. I held the item with my hands, so maybe it did get greased by skin oil, who knows. I had a lot of help from other more experienced people. They guided me through it, with a lot of patience. Without them, I'd been stuck way before. But even they were like... maybe this isn't for you.
My motor skills are just not that good (possibly related to my ASD or father having MS), and I notice that with everything where I gotta use my hands. From elementary school handwriting (learning to write) or even before with tasks like eating, putting clothes on, etc. That is as far back as I can remember. Ever onwards, things like sports. I am simply physically clumsy, and it requires a lot of effort and practice to get on a decent level. Can I do it? Can I hand write? Yes, I can. But it requires a lot of practice to get to a decent level. I can satisfy my wife with my hands though, probably my most important skill I am grateful for. No joke, btw. Although the fact I can, say, give myself food (eat) is probably more important, survival wise.
The one skill I would love to be able to achieve throughout my life, would be programming, not soldering. I mean, something like soldering is awesome, I am a sucker for right to repair, second hand, reusable hardware, etc something like programming comes close to, say, Lego. Though programming wise I am not sure nowadays, given AI. And there too, I tried VB, TCL, C, Java, Python. Multiple Python courses, too, from MOOC, books, to a professional teacher in a classroom. I've been (and am) able to make small adjustments to code, and do some shell scripting (and mIRC scripting, but that was roughly 30 years ago). That's it. That is without AI, I haven't bothered with that. I like to run LLMs locally.
Flux core solder is crap. It doesn’t contain enough flux to begin with and since it’s inside the solder, it can’t actually do the work it’s supposed to. You need to apply flux separately before soldering, and lead-free solder used to be harder to work with. That’s the leading mistake I’ve seen frustrate beginners.
Steady hands aren’t a requirement unless you’re doing very complex repairs like threading wire through a BGA grid. You’re supposed to use the surface tension of the solder to snap the component’s pins to the PCB pads. After you snap two corners to the pads, you can just glide a tip with some solder over the rest of the pins and the heat and flux do the rest of the work (the flux’s main job is actually changing the solder’s surface tension to make this easier and more predictable).
Thermal mass is important, please have a look at my other post for a recommended tutorial set. Silver based solders like SAC305 will also stick to most plated pin types.
Sometimes people are given a BS fools errand, and convince themselves there is some hidden secret to workmanship. You would have been better off with a $25 30W Weller iron and $7 flux+Wick kit off Amazon for through-hole style PCB kits. =3