As far as lead vs lead free goes:
Lead boils at 1749 °C (3180 °F). You will not be inhaling any lead vapors ever. Your equipment would melt and you would die from the heat before the lead vaporizes. Regardless of which you choose, the most immediate health hazard is flux fumes! All flux is poisonous! You will need fume extraction regardless! I will talk about this more later. As far as lead poisoning goes, the primary pathway will always be oral ingestion (excepting unrelated cases like lead tetra ethyl, aka leaded gas which is still used by small aircraft AVGAS). So, always wash your hands after handling any lead and do not eat or drink at your workstation (take regular breaks to drink water). This is equally important when handling flux, so don’t assume that using lead free solder means you can eat at your workstation. Another important thing is cleaning up. Always wipe down your workstation when you finish up. You will need to clean up all of the solder splatter and flux drippings, so I recommend using 90%+ isopropanol. This is where the leaded vs unleaded really matters, as putting lead in your trash can isn’t great. You won’t necessarily be poisoning your local water supply with the small amount of waste you’ll make, but every little bit adds up. I personally think you should get some experience with leaded solder first, as it’s easier to use, but look into switching when you can.
For fume extraction, the easiest way would be a fan and an open window. I usually use a small fan with a carbon filter that I bought for cheap like 10 years ago (I regularly replace the filter), as I only do small hobby stuff and I only get a month or two a year I can stand leaving the windows open where I live, but there are better options.
While it will increase your initial costs, I recommend only ever buying ESD safe equipment. I’m assuming synth boards and guitar pedal boards have a lot of overlap, so you will eventually be soldering semiconductors onto the boards and you will be pissed the first time it doesn’t work because you fried it. I have a cheap silicon ESD mat I do my soldering on, an ESD safe Weller soldering station (discontinued model, but you need temperature control), metal helping hands, ESD wrist straps, and an ESD tweezer set. Definitely get some nice tweezers eventually as the shitty ones made me want to throw things.
Some nice to have items are alligator leads and test equipment. I highly recommend a good multimeter (I’m bourgie and have a Fluke, but you don’t need to spend that much) at the very least. It can help make sure your components are good and working at spec as well as diagnose which part you messed up. A decent power supply can be useful, but I don’t get a lot of use out of my cheap FNIRSI one. I intend to get an oscilloscope eventually, but they’re generally either expensive or shit. Honestly, the best piece of troubleshooting gear I have is a length of instrument cable that I put a 1/4” jack on one end and the other I soldered together the jacket to hook alligator leads to and made the core into a probe (just a length of wire I soldered to the core and then heat shrinked a bit of dowel near the tip to stiffen it). I plug my guitar into the pedal input, then I plug the jack end of my homemade probe into my cheap guitar amp, clip the jacket to the board ground, then poke the probe end around to see where the signal gets lost.
Speaking of, get a heat gun and some heat shrink. It comes in handy. Also, get a flux syringe. I can’t tell you how much easier it is for solder to flow when there’s a little too much flux on the joint. You’ll need to clean all of the excess flux off at the end. For that, I start with an acid brush (they’re cheap in bulk) and isopropanol, then spray it with a can of contact cleaner. Some lint-free rags are very helpful as well (I acquired mine from work).
That’s a great point about ESD protection. I have a esd mat for when I’m rearranging stuff in my case but i didn’t realize that same thing applies to the soldering iron itself. Is that a common feature or so i need to search for it specifically?
As far as lead vs lead free goes:
Lead boils at 1749 °C (3180 °F). You will not be inhaling any lead vapors ever. Your equipment would melt and you would die from the heat before the lead vaporizes. Regardless of which you choose, the most immediate health hazard is flux fumes! All flux is poisonous! You will need fume extraction regardless! I will talk about this more later. As far as lead poisoning goes, the primary pathway will always be oral ingestion (excepting unrelated cases like lead tetra ethyl, aka leaded gas which is still used by small aircraft AVGAS). So, always wash your hands after handling any lead and do not eat or drink at your workstation (take regular breaks to drink water). This is equally important when handling flux, so don’t assume that using lead free solder means you can eat at your workstation. Another important thing is cleaning up. Always wipe down your workstation when you finish up. You will need to clean up all of the solder splatter and flux drippings, so I recommend using 90%+ isopropanol. This is where the leaded vs unleaded really matters, as putting lead in your trash can isn’t great. You won’t necessarily be poisoning your local water supply with the small amount of waste you’ll make, but every little bit adds up. I personally think you should get some experience with leaded solder first, as it’s easier to use, but look into switching when you can.
For fume extraction, the easiest way would be a fan and an open window. I usually use a small fan with a carbon filter that I bought for cheap like 10 years ago (I regularly replace the filter), as I only do small hobby stuff and I only get a month or two a year I can stand leaving the windows open where I live, but there are better options.
While it will increase your initial costs, I recommend only ever buying ESD safe equipment. I’m assuming synth boards and guitar pedal boards have a lot of overlap, so you will eventually be soldering semiconductors onto the boards and you will be pissed the first time it doesn’t work because you fried it. I have a cheap silicon ESD mat I do my soldering on, an ESD safe Weller soldering station (discontinued model, but you need temperature control), metal helping hands, ESD wrist straps, and an ESD tweezer set. Definitely get some nice tweezers eventually as the shitty ones made me want to throw things.
Some nice to have items are alligator leads and test equipment. I highly recommend a good multimeter (I’m bourgie and have a Fluke, but you don’t need to spend that much) at the very least. It can help make sure your components are good and working at spec as well as diagnose which part you messed up. A decent power supply can be useful, but I don’t get a lot of use out of my cheap FNIRSI one. I intend to get an oscilloscope eventually, but they’re generally either expensive or shit. Honestly, the best piece of troubleshooting gear I have is a length of instrument cable that I put a 1/4” jack on one end and the other I soldered together the jacket to hook alligator leads to and made the core into a probe (just a length of wire I soldered to the core and then heat shrinked a bit of dowel near the tip to stiffen it). I plug my guitar into the pedal input, then I plug the jack end of my homemade probe into my cheap guitar amp, clip the jacket to the board ground, then poke the probe end around to see where the signal gets lost.
Speaking of, get a heat gun and some heat shrink. It comes in handy. Also, get a flux syringe. I can’t tell you how much easier it is for solder to flow when there’s a little too much flux on the joint. You’ll need to clean all of the excess flux off at the end. For that, I start with an acid brush (they’re cheap in bulk) and isopropanol, then spray it with a can of contact cleaner. Some lint-free rags are very helpful as well (I acquired mine from work).
Otherwise, have fun and don’t burn yourself.
That’s a great point about ESD protection. I have a esd mat for when I’m rearranging stuff in my case but i didn’t realize that same thing applies to the soldering iron itself. Is that a common feature or so i need to search for it specifically?
It’s pretty common, but anything that is ESD safe will advertise as such.