Archer Solder Helper Tool Handle

thingiverse

You can't help but cringe when your trusty 35-year-old, vintage solder tool from your first starter toolkit, a nostalgic reminder of your early days in geekdom, suddenly snaps in two, sending shards of cheap injection-molded plastic flying across the room. At this point, you have several options. You can head to Amazon and buy a new toolset for $7.50 that lacks the vintage Radio Shack feel, or hop in the car and hope the Radio Shack Store Locator on their website has kept up with the closing of over 1,000 stores, leaving only 70 corporate stores in the US. Alternatively, you can take the option I chose. I went to Amazon and bought a 3D printer, then designed and printed my own replacement handle, preserving that last vestige of early childhood geekdom that Radio Shack had taken from me as the company's products fade into memory. It's with this in mind that I share with you a design that will likely appeal only to a narrow demographic - my replacement handle for RadioShack/Archer double-ended solder tools.