by cvoinescu » Mon Feb 11, 2013 5:32 pm
I bought a "soldering drip mat" that's used by plumbers when soldering copper pipe, to catch any hot solder that may otherwise fall on the floor and damage it. It's made of woven fiberglass or mineral glass yarn. More expensive varieties have some thermally insulating material on the back too, or between two sheets of fiberglass weave; mine was just the one layer. I unravelled a few strands and wrapped them around the heater block and secured them with Kapton tape.