Meh I guess it's just a matter of practice then. I was hoping that there was something I was doing horribly wrong which I could correct and suddenly be able to do it
I doubt that the problem is the differing types of solder, it's more likely just my inexperience with soldering. I watched a good video on the subject and have been trying to copy what I saw in that, but it doesn't seem to be working out well.
I've been trying to position the tip so that the side of it is in contact with both the pad and the lead (after tinning the iron and the lead), and then touching the solder from the reel to the joint and then removing the iron. But the rather bad results are shown above
It's probably not that much better, but the third one looks slightly better than the others at least; that was the last one I did before giving up and posting the pictures here. I'm slightly comforted by the fact that I think it's actually better than it was on the PCB I removed that wire from, whoever soldered the wire on had done an apalling job of it
Perhaps I should be using a tip with a larger surface until I get more used to it, the one I'm using at the moment is a relatively fine point.
Maybe I'll just torture myself by cutting a metre of cable into 3cm sections and then soldering it all back together
I'll consider it a failure if I can't use the cable to lift a dining chair off the ground afterwards