Are you a wiper or a flicker ?

 I remember one time in the ham radio club shack during high school I was listening to the Swan 400 while a couple of the club members were working at the bench across the room.  One of the guys (no names will be mentioned to protect basically nobody ;) was soldering and as some of us do, flicked some excess solder off the iron tip.  Unfortunately the solder found it's way to a leg of the other fella, caught him right where the leg meets the foot.  Well, there was some yelling and epithets expressed and eventually a shoe/sock removed and it was determined that nothing super serious happened.

The moral for me was:  don't kibbitz while someone is soldering !

So are you a wiper or a flicker ?  I guess I'm both but when I do wipe I usually do it on one of these:

maybe steel would be a cheaper substitute ?

The idea is that the metal scrubber will clean the tip fairly well but it won't cool the tip as much as a wet sponge.  And there's no need to periodically wet the sponge.  I attached a small tin can to a hunk of red oak used for a soldering iron stand and the scrubber fits in there perfectly.

the soldering iron holder

  The iron goes into that rather poorly bent coat hanger.

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm