Soldering questions

Would I have to worry about damaging anything using a 850 degree iron?

Thanks, Just decided to buy a cooler iron (Hakko dash 15w 680 degrees farenheit, regulated).

This board is a little bit difficult to solder. The printed circuit tin parts are too small ... or there are too much paint on the solder face. It's not a real pleasure to mount this shield.

This was my first DIY electronics project after learning to solder, and, I had no trouble besides the trouble I willingly created for myself (desoldering an IC socket that I placed the wrong way because I'm a little OCD).

I find (so far, with limited experience) that if you use an iron around 700F with lead, narrow diameter rosin-core solder it makes most (small electronics) work easy. The only exception being making through-hole jumps. This is a bit easier with lead-free solder and a slightly hotter iron (assuming you have the luxury of temp regulation).

P.S. also the lead fumes are addictive :b

I would have to agree re the solder pads. They're rather on the small side, and the mask feels it was over printed. May I suggest a solder pad of at least 1mm wide from the center hole. Pads for the larger components were perfect...nice and big, allowing good contact. With the large ground plane, some did require some preheating but a few seconds of a well regulated iron seemed to do the trick nicely.

I found the solder flowed easier with the application of a little noclean on each of the components I was soldering. Yes, it took a fair bit of noclean, however solder flowed through the joints nicely as expected and the pedal works nicely. I nocleaned the previous spots and they reflowed ok too.