There are some basic tools you will need to do your own electronics.
A safety notice. Electricity can be dangerous.You must use caution when dealing with electronic circuits to avoid electric shock.Although most of the circuits you will use are very low voltage they can cause you harm and especially is you are using DC power supplys. A lot of electronic components are mass produced and sometimes quality control is lacking so it is important to work carefully and check all of the equipment you buy to ensure it is safe.
The basic components you will needare ;
1.Soldering iron.
Even if you buy prebuilt circuits you may still need to solder switches and LEds so a good soldering iron is essential.It is also good to have a heat gun to heat shrink tubing that covers your solder joints.
2.Soldering supplies.
You will need solder and flux to help the flow of solder on to your parts, a tinning powder to coat the tip of the soldering iron to ease flow of solder.
You will need some wire to connect parts, wire cutters, and a wire stripper is really useful. A heat resistant mat will also save you setting your work surface on fire and making clean up much easier.
3. Hands free holder
You need to use both hands when you solder so it is very helpful to have a hands free holder to hold the wires whiulst you solder.The parts also get very hot once you apply the soldering iron so the holder will save you getting burned.
4. Multimeter
If you plan on building your own circuits a multimeter is an essential tool.The main functions are to measure voltage, current and resistance. I will do a tutorial on using a multimeter.Once we get inot making and testing circuits you will see how often we will need the multimeter.When we talk about power supplys we will be checking to make sure the voltage we are aiming for is actually what we are getting out of our circuits.There are lots of different makes of multimeter-some can automatically detect what setting to use and some you need to manually adjust.
Here are some picutres of my set up.My soldering iron is actually a reworking station.it has a heat gun as well as a soldering iron and a digital readout so you can set the temperature of your iron.
darbyvet attached the following image(s):