Review on 🔧 Standard Greenlee 1700 Desoldering Tool by Jerimiah Augustine

I'm using other people's reviews on Revain more and more to quickly find the best products. This is a case in point - I looked at other teardown tools (some more expensive) when I saw that they had better reviews. I was a bit skeptical at first having used this type of disassembly tool many years ago, but it wasn't very good quality. I bought it anyway based on the customer reviews and it's great! The old one I had had petroleum jelly inside to make the effect smoother and ensure the suction was as strong as possible to prevent air from escaping. It soon became clogged and far from smooth. And the friction slowed the piston down so it lost suction anyway. It doesn't have any of those issues as the spring mechanism is closed and doesn't need petroleum jelly as it's smooth enough. I know some others are concerned that the flimsy threads on the plastic end might come loose? It shouldn't, as my old one also had a metal shaft and an equally sized plastic end with fine threads. This one has served 25 years with careful handling and the replacement of several Teflon tips - a spring is broken in it, not a thread. I did a cross thread once when the thread was clogged with petroleum jelly and solder particles and I couldn't see it. Because it has very thin threads, there's little chance of it coming loose, so it doesn't need to be overtightened at all. That's why the carving on my old one survived the spring. So why did I only give four stars and not five? This was a close fix, but I'm happy to give a full five stars for perfect items, and this has two downsides (one small) that I've found. A small problem is that the button you press on the spring is quite small and your thumb can slip off, especially if it's thick. Second, the edges of the slot you put your thumb in are pretty sharp to me. Sliding your thumb up and down only invites snips, and I had to file mine, so unfortunately I didn't finish well. TO EDIT. At first I was hoping it was just me having sharp edges, but I see others reporting the same and cutting them.