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I learned soldering by playing around with electric guitars, amps, cables, etc.
Once you're ready to move up to more difficult things such as PCB repair and surface mount, you'll have acquired the basic skills and knack.
At the basic level, all you need is a soldering iron, some solder, and basic hand tools that you already have if you're into tinkering. The rest of the stuff can come later as needed.
Don't overlook taking a community college course. You'll have access to the latest equipment without having to own it.
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Also, make sure your solder is high quality. I've ordered solder from AliExpress - both leaded and unleaded - and they were terrible.
Any recommendations?
This video helped me recently too [1]
Also I take pictures and have Gemini critique, give feedback. It helped me learn about the tips more I didn't realize, after switching my tip from a broader knife one to a chisel one, results way better (for that use cases)
Then I did know I just had to practice and get frustrated and come back, felt like two steps back and one forward, one time I was just suddenly making cold joints left and right. But hours practicing can't be replaced by just reading.
This is more answering the title.
It goes over the basics and helps you get going. From there I suggest reading posts, watching videos and just talking to people who solder. Find some bare board kits (or your own kits) and assemble them. Soldering, like welding, is one of those things you can learn to do in a day...but it takes experience to get good at it. A lot of what you do is by "feel".
Once you get a hang of it and would like to be able to inspect your own work find a copy of IPC-610A (there are free PDFs online often, otherwise it is expensive). This gives a visual representation of what is a failure or just a process indicator.
edit: Most important. Do not touch the solder to the iron tip. You heat the joint and touch the solder to that. This is the most common newbie mistake you see.
[1]https://mightyohm.com/files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_EN.p...
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I will say it's important that the soldering iron be temperature controlled. It's especially nice if it's one with the temperature sensing integrated into the tip in a cartridge (like the ones you suggested). Also, 63/37 tin/lead "eutectic" solder is the easiest to use. Wash your hands after using it, or wear gloves. 60/40 solder is almost as easy, and cheaper. Lead-free is more difficult, especially for learning. Le…
I think there's no real need to learn with leaded anymore now that we have temp controlled irons and better fluxes and such. Wearing gloves and washing your hands five million times is more annoying than just using lead free. And even with perfect precautions, the flux expands and makes it spit tiny little balls, which then contaminates your whole work area with a somewhat fine dust.