Plainwire / Start here / The eleven-tool kit
The eleven-tool kit
Every guide on this wiki can be done with the eleven items below. We keep the list short deliberately: a beginner who buys a 148-piece set gets one usable driver and a hundred and forty-seven bits that round screws.
No brands, no links, no affiliate codes. Where a specification matters we give the specification.
| # | Tool | Specification that matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Precision driver with a rotating cap | The cap is the point. It lets you keep axial pressure on with your palm while your fingers turn. |
| 2 | Bit set, roughly 25 bits | PH0 to PH2, PZ1 to PZ2, T5 to T10 including security, Y00, P5. See Screw heads and drivers. |
| 3 | Plastic opening picks and one card | Two thicknesses. An expired store card does most of what a purpose-made spudger does. |
| 4 | Fine tweezers, curved | Non-magnetic if you can find them; anti-static is marketing at this level. |
| 5 | Multimeter | Continuity with an audible beep, DC volts, resistance. Nothing else is needed for anything here. Fused probes. |
| 6 | Temperature-controlled soldering iron | Controlled, not merely powered. A 2.4 mm chisel tip and a 1 mm conical. |
| 7 | Solder and flux | 0.7 mm cored solder and a no-clean flux pen. See Solder alloys and flux. |
| 8 | Desoldering braid | 2 mm. Buy small quantities; it oxidises on the shelf and stops wicking. |
| 9 | Isopropyl alcohol, 99 per cent | Not the 70 per cent kind sold for skin. The remainder is water and it stays behind. |
| 10 | Magnifier or a phone camera | Any magnification. A phone camera held close is genuinely adequate for inspecting joints. |
| 11 | A magnetic mat or an ice-cube tray | Somewhere to put screws in the order they came out. This is the tool that saves the most reassemblies. |
Things people buy that they do not need yet
- A hot air station. Genuinely useful for surface-mount rework and useless for everything on this wiki. Buy it when you have a job that needs it, not before.
- An ultrasonic cleaner. Superb for liquid-damaged boards, idle the rest of the time, and easy to ruin a board with if you skip the drying.
- An anti-static wrist strap. Not wrong, but a distant second to touching the chassis before you touch the board and not working on carpet in a wool jumper.
- A bench power supply. Wonderful. Not required until you are diagnosing shorts by injecting current, which is well past anything here.
Consumables worth keeping stocked
Kapton tape, because it tolerates the iron. Double-sided foam tape in one width. Cable ties in the smallest size. Wire-wrap wire in 30 AWG. Heat-shrink in three diameters. A pack of assorted capacitors is not worth it — buy the exact value when you need it, because a shelf-aged electrolytic is not a new one.
Storage
Whatever you use, put the bits back after each job rather than at the end of the week. The commonest reason a repair stalls is a missing T6, and the second commonest is a screw that went into the wrong hole because the tray got tipped.
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