Decided to start doing a bit of wire setup tonight. I opened up all my new goodies, snipped some short lengths of black wire, and started tinning them to make all of my ground to ground connections (plan to wire these in a chain). After a half an hour I had a whole complete set of wires done. About 11 in total.

Then I realized that they weren't connected to each other in anyway. So the whole thing was a waste.

I tried snipping off the quick disconnect from one end of a couple of wires and twisting them together, but once I had tinned them they would no longer fit into the quick connects. So now I'm thinking that maybe the 24 gauge wire wasn't such a bad idea after all. If I'm going to be connecting 2 wires into each disconnect to make a single chain for all of my grounds, then the 24 gauge will probably fit better. But of course, I left that wire at work (still haven't returned it to Fry's.)

Was good soldering practice though. There were a few things that surprised me about the whole thing. First, the soldering iron took a lot longer to heat up than I expected. I thought I'd just plug it in and a minute or so later it'd be ready to go...but when I first put solder to it nothing much happened. I thought my iron was defective or that I'd gotten the wrong kind of solder at first, but eventually it came up to heat and the solder melted onto the tip of the iron very easily.

Secondly, I can't imagine doing this without the little helping hands/magnifying glass. One hand is holding the iron, one is holding the solder, leaving no hands to hold the wire.

Third, not sure what I'm doing wrong (or occasionally doing right), but some times when tinning the wires, they would heat up very quickly, and the solder would coat it after only a couple of seconds. Other times, I'd have to hold the soldering iron in contact with the wire for 10 or 15 seconds. I tried to keep a bit of solder on the end of the iron, as I had read that it transfers heat much better that way, but I'm not sure why it was so inconsistent.heat up and the solder would ooze right on to it. Maybe things will be quicker and more consistent with the thinner wire.