I used to drive hour to a harbor freight but a few years ago they opened on up 5 min from me. They’ve gotten better and worse since then. They stopped carrying the really cool machinist tools. Back to our topic, I have that router speed control it works well for my hand held flex shaft grinder.

 

I used to drive hour to a harbor freight but a few years ago they opened on up 5 min from me.

It takes me longer than 5 minutes to get my mail.

I used to drive about an hour to get to HF. Now I only have to drive about half an hour.

 

My point is that the power controller that I described is easy to assemble and works well and the two that I have built did not cost me anything because they were built from used parts. Let us avoid wandering miles off the thread topic.

 

Probably the core of problem is abnormal network voltage in whole UK. The soldering hammers are produced in russia (220V), Poland (230V), or China (220V), whilst UK uses the 240V. Thus, feel free to apply the thyristor dimmer to adjust the temperature, or better LATR (regulable autotransformer). For 99,999999% of whole soldering jobs on the Planet the accurate temperature control is simply unneeded.

Sometimes people have the reciproke problem, they wnt the hammer would be warmer instead. Then solution is to load thyristor regulator with Gretz bridge with capacitor, thus the voltage is easy adjustable between 310 and 155 Volts.

P.S. RE:""solder at all onto the (new) tips"" It means You owned a "new technology" tips. Old was designed to be wetted by tin, pure copper, and if will a life longevity then mechanically compacted copper (what is serious lack at cheap China hammers). New type are specially designed let never be welted by tin, with idea, that You will not take a flux and take a solder-metal with hammer to carry it onto joint, but You shall warm-up the joint with clean tip and then push on the solder wire with flux in the core.
There is lure to just sliff away that anti-wetting layer to convert it to "normal" tip, but DONT do it. You have hard risk of 1) the center of tip is grey powder filled (aka made of well dried donkey sh*t) and 2) the any kind of copper is absent there 3) that copper is willing to dissolute in tin literary in minutes. In such cases my reccomendation is simply throw out those donkey sh*t and put instead the thick copper wire piece of permitted dimensions. If any possible, take slightly thicker wire and work with a hammer on anvil until it becomes hard and springy - then longevity of dissolution will become ten-folded.