Punching Coro

[zman]

I don't remember ever seeing this method for punching coro.

I started a project today that requires me to punch a TON of holes in coro. After playing around for awhile figuring the best way to do this, I pulled out my handy dandy, WAY old, cheap, $5 special, soldering iron that I burn holes in my stobe lenses with. Using this is just as fast as an awl or drill, just much cleaner. No where near as much push through on the material. Very easy, and not hard to do at all. Wish I would have thought of this a few years ago.

[smartalec]

just make sure its an old tip an in a well ventilated area

[ErnieHorning]

I hardy ever have a tip go bad and I usually don't have a need to do a TON of anything other than soldering with my iron.

If you want to poke holes, just wrap a piece of wire around the tip. What I do is first wrap the wire around just the tip to get the shape, then pull it off and wrap the rest around something slightly smaller than the heater shaft. Then twist it onto the iron like a screw so that it will be tight and won't move.

I've done this also when I need to cut plastic; just use small wire.

This works best if the iron has a variable temperature control so that you can apply just enough heat without smoking it.