Soldering helping hands

I decided to find one of those metal soldering helping hands, but found instead instructables post  how to make you own, and more versatile for less money. Main ingredient - flexible coolant hoses. These can be found fairly cheaply - about 3$ per hose with 22 joints on eBay.

So I bought two 1/2'' size and 12'' length coolant hoses. Other required part - angled hose tips were much more expensive  (about 7$ for 4), so I decided to craft my own when all parts will arrive.

I took 4mm furniture bolt and that fit perfectly to banana plug hole. Banana plug will act as holder for alligator clip.

Secondly - I modified existing hose tips with hot soldering iron. Unexpectedly there weren't a lot of fatal smoke.

Test if everything fits

And secure it with epoxy

Next budget-important thing - I had no nuts to fit these hose connectors, nor did I had NPT tap to make threaded holes

So I needed to find a cheap and simple way to attach these hoses to the base. And I found that these 4mm bolt heads fit perfectly into existing joints (blue ones). So I heated my soldering iron once more.

 And made deeper holes for few joints. Last one did not survive.

I stabilized head of the screw with super glue and tried few reinforcement ideas. This part needs to be strong at base and durable enough to last many twists. Glued plastic can break from the metal head if screwed to hard to wooden base, so that additional nut absorbs all that force and big washer does not allow it to wobble.

 Everything measured and nuts adjusted to leave tiny gap between bigger washer and the plastic

 And as much epoxy as possible was injected into those gaps

Base joints were screwed in place to harden vertically

After that it was only matter of attaching hoses and alligator tips. This two headed thing is ready to work! Wooden base is light but hollow, so it can easily hold some metal weights for more stability

All this monstrosity can be easily folded to compact version

See you later alligator