Patricia: I had the Weller WCT 100 (until I gave it to my son and picked up the Hako 936). The WCT 100 has a fine conical tip available, model ST-7, that I have found quite useful in SMT work. I use .015" silver-based solder with that iron. My only concern with it was that it did not appear to be a grounded-tip iron, although I have never zapped an IC with ESD while using that one. It is a bit slower to heat up and, as Cecil said, long periods of resting at temperature can lead to a corroded tip.
The comments about the Hako 936 are spot on. I picked it up at Fry's, along with a nice assortment of tips, for circa $90. Concerning the microscopes, I had an Intel "kiddie scope" that was USB connected to the PC and gave me choices of 10X, 60X, and 100X. The problem I had with it was that the focal length was such that, once you mounted any resistors on the board in hairpin fashion, they forced the top of the board to be positioned such that I could not focus in on anything but the tops of the resistors' hairpins. You definitely want to look at that aspect of any scope you get. As for the actual soldering work, I have found the cheapo binocular head band magnifiers to be handy, and have had just as much success with the little fluorescent magnifying lamp (at least until I pull out my scope and start getting all sorts of signals from the fluorescent bulb). If you are interested, I have a compendium of articles and tips on soldering in the home page of my web site dedicated to the build of the Softrock Lite + Xtall 8.3 receiver. (http://golddredgervideo.com/wb5rvz/Home.htm) 73 de Robby WB5RVZ
