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The main advantages of the Bernzomatic over other torches and butane soldering tools are that it can hold enough butane to burn for a very long time and the flame/heat is highly adjustable. It's also nice that the tool stands by itself, so there's little fear of it falling or rolling away while it is ignited and dangerous. And the pistol grip is comfortable for a big guy like me. The problem is that solder tips need replacing after just a few hours of use. The result is that I need to keep a couple of soldering tools handy as backups for when the tip fails on the Bernzomatic and then I have to find someone who stocks the tips and pay a hefty price for a replacement. The tips are too expensive to buy some just to keep as spares.

The tips for the Bernzomatic come in an odd size, so you can't use a standard $.99 cent solder tip to replace the one on the micro torch. The manufacturer only makes their 3/16-inch solder tips available as part of a kit that sells for $16 dollars and the kit only has one solder tip. The rest of the package contains redundant cutting and torch tips that are fated to gather dust in a drawer or to go straight to the landfill. It's very wasteful.

The kit is available at some niche hardware stores, online or direct from the manufacturer (part number ST9009). It's better to find it in a hardware store because when you add shipping and handling, you'll find that a replacement tip will cost more than half the purchase price of a new unit.

When companies deliberately use non-standard parts to coerce their customers into wasting their money on expensive replacements, it's worthy of reproach.

Even though it is one of my favorite tools, I don't recommend the Bernzomatic torch to other people because of the trauma associated with replacing the tips. I don't see how it would have cost them anything to have designed the tool to use standard parts. The folks at Bernzomatic should be ashamed of themselves for taking such an awesome tool and mucking it up so badly.