Yep, I'm spoiled. I used to inventory all kinds of parts and boards for my business. Price attrition and obsolescence made this inventory lose value after a few months, making it financially unattractive to continue the practice. However, I had to do this as a long repair time would invariably inspire the customer to look elsewhere for the repair. About 10 years ago, overnight and next day service became sufficiently common to actually be fairly reliable. Instead of stocking rapidly depreciating parts and boards, I started to rely on fast delivery. It doesn't work for everything, but I'm now dependent on it for parts. Also, it's often easier and faster to order a small part on eBay, than to try and find it in my office mess.
Well ok. Maybe if I used a sharp pair of flush cutting diagonal cutters.
I've used one of those mini solder pots on some fairly cluttered benches. I've found that putting it high above the clutter works best. Unfortunately, that means putting it on top of the pile of test equipment, which is often not the safest location. However, putting it high does preserve the test leads and prevents setting fire to the blue prints. With a suitable grating, it can also keep my coffee warm. However, on hot days, I don't run the solder pot.
When I did mostly bench work, I used to consume about a 1 lb roll per year. As I graduated into mismanagement and politics, it decreased to maybe 1 lb roll every 15 years. I'm using partial rolls and a mixture of different types these days. I would guess I'm still at 1 lb every
15 years.The solder pot does not do so well. It holds about 2 lbs of solder or about $25 worth of surplus bar solder. I find myself replacing the entire contents about once every 6 months if I'm using it heavily.
Incidentally, I discovered that the tiny solder pot is good for tinning component leads and maybe some heavier gauge stranded wire, but is not suitable for battery cables and heavy gauge wire. When I stuffed a piece of #2 AWG stranded into the solder pot, the copper wire made an excellent heat sink, sucking the heat out of the pot, and causing all the solder to harden. I soon had a heavy wire with ALL the solder in the pot stuck to the end. I had to use a propane torch to melt the solder and put most of it back in the pot. Oops.
Many years ago, I picked up a fairly large box of broken Weller soldering stations and tips, from one of the aerospace companies. Apparently, it was their "to be fixed" collection. By juggling parts around and doing trivial repairs, I was able to get about half of them working. That was maybe 30 years ago. There are better and cheaper irons available today, but until I run out of parts and pieces from the original collection. Also, I solder copper water pipe with a propane torch and unleaded solder. Building code demands that lead NOT be used near potable water.
No, I'm not that old. The oldest I've dealt with are 2way radios (Motorola, GE, RCA, Link, etc) from the 1950's that used rubber insulated wires. The rubber insulation would eventually harden and crumble. Everything would be working, but all the solid wires connecting the tube sockets on the bottom of the chassis were converted to bare wires. As long as nothing moved, it worked. Keeping such radios going was fun. Resoldering the remaining rubber wires was not fun as the rubber would smoke and stink badly.