If you do any soldering you probably have a pair of helping hands, or some bulky heavy thing like this that can hold your project or components steady while you wire them. They’re useful, but a little clunky to travel with, and often overkill if you’re just splicing a wire or two.

In terms of price and portability, poster tack (a.k.a. poster putty) is a great alternative. The first problem it solves is what I call the wandering board problem, where you’re pushing your project around the table as you’re trying to soldering it up. Using a glob of tack to temporarily fix your board in place makes the job a lot easier.

The second problem solved by tack is component to component soldering. You need to put a resistor on a leg of an LED, or splice two wires together. Everyone has their way of doing things, but in terms of convenience, few ways are faster than just sticking the pieces down with tack, and hitting it with some solder.

I know I’m not the first to think of it — you’ve probably heard this advice before — but if you’re like me you always forget to grab this stuff when you’re at the store. So do us both a favor, use the Amazon link here, throw $3 at it, and see if it helps you out. And remember, you can see thousands of reader recommended tools, and hacks, at cool-tools.org.

Update 06/12/18

For quick jobs, I still reach for the little blog of poster putty in my workbench drawer before fussing with any of my helping hands tools. For the price, you can’t beat it for keeping things momentarily stuck to your table. I’ll reuse the same blob many times before it loses it stickiness.

For big jobs, though, or projects where I’ll need to heat connections very hot, I’ll skip the putty because it will melt and get a little messy. It’s not perfect, but for many jobs it’s quick, cheap, and effective.