I was able to procure myself some leaded solder and I had no idea it would make things THAT much easier. Turns out it wasn’t that I sucked at this all along

@Siph you probably only used bad unleaded then, I've never felt that much of a difference (learned it by doing a few thousand unleaded solder joints tho)

@noiob Went to unsolder everything on this board to try again on another one. Before doing that I tried to do a comparison.

Same glob of flux, same iron temp, same technique. Bottom was my unleaded wire. Top is my leaded wire

@Siph you need a significantly higher temp to melt unleaded solder

@noiob yeah, temps that damage the solder mask on the PCB

@Siph never had that happen, what temps are we talking about?

@noiob 400°C, and it still wasn’t flowing as nicely as the leaded wire at 360

I broke multiple pads by just reflowing

@Siph yeah not sure what's happening there, I've put more than 400°C into boards no problem

@noiob maybe I’m doing things wrong and I’m just inexperienced but leaded solder isn’t that much more expensive and I find it much easier to work with