The insane geniuses at Evil Mad Scientist Labs have put together a roundup of their favorite tools for working with electronics: " In this roundup we've collected some handy–and even important –tools along that you might not have seen before, along with some best-of-breed versions of everyday electronics tools."
This is like a painter getting a look at Rembrandt picks for best brushes, paints and canvasses.
"Surgical tools." Soldering isn't brain surgery. Only, sometimes it is.
Clockwise from top: Hobby knife, nonmagnetic fine point tweezers, scissors of different sizes, hemostats or locking forceps.
Hobby knife: No, this isn't really a surgical tool. Scalpels are easy to come by, but I find that the blades are generally too thin. They flex and break. In most cases for electronics, the good old hobby knife is stronger and more capable. This tool is one of the most important for general-purpose repair and hacking. You can use it to easily cut a trace on a circuit board, to scrape the solder mask off of a trace, to trim down stubborn connectors, or to cut a path through a molten solder bridge. Just damn handy.
Fine point tweezers in different shapes: Just the thing for setting individual surface mount components in place. The angled ones make it much easer to flip over a component– say that tiny SMT resistor that happened to land upside down. They're also handy for guiding wires into terminal blocks and placing patch wires before you solder them down.
Scissors: For trimming kapton tape to size, cutting copper wire in awkward locations, and fitting where wire clippers can't. And for all kinds of other things you never think of until you use them.
Locking forceps: Like the grown up version of an alligator clip. Use it to hold two wires near their intersection for soldering, or any number of other uses. (See here for some of those other uses.)
