HOWTO make a prison soldering iron

By Cory Doctorow at 3:23 am Friday, Jul 31

Jared sez, "Prison Proxy is a blog maintained by an acquaintance (friend?) of an inmate serving a life sentence in an unspecified "Texas Penitentiary." The blog, purportedly based on daily snail-mail letters from the prisoner, provides fascinating, 'live' insight into prison life. The July 30th post explains how inmates create soldering irons to 'fix headphones and alter radios.'"

To make the soldering iron, one must first fill up his hotpot with water. Then, he laces each prong of the hotpot's plug with wire, the left side of which is readied to be inserted in the plug, and the right side of which is for the iron.

He then takes a pencil and shaves an inch or so of wood off the end, so that the lead sticks out that far by itself. He uses fabric to wrap two pieces of metal--each shaped like a long hockey stick with the L-curve on both ends--to the pencil with their L-curved ends clamping down on either side of the exposed lead.

How It's Made: Soldering Irons (Thanks, Jared!)