Hi,
If you are only making one or two units then Veroboard/Stripboard is ideal, you can solder some header strips on the board and plug your Arduino into the them.
This is a POC part of a project that was going to some field tests.
Tom... 
Generally, thatās the first lesson of āhow not to solderā.
The quickest way to create long term unreliable dry joints.
Not being picky, weāve all done it, but itās a short term solution for a short term problem.
Itās worth spending a couple of hours following a skilled tutorial to learn good practice once. Your projects will workā¦ long after youāve list the documentation you wrote for them.
Iāve been soldering over forty years, luckily I was exposed to a ātrainedā mil-spec teacher very young, and unless Iāve been lazy, it was worth the effort of learning.
Iāve met @TomGeorge ā¦ heās a good source of real-world practical knowledge.
Do it dirty to see if it works, do it properly if you want it to work.
Poppycock.
About 46 for me; including 7 as a senior avionics tech for the Air Force where we were taught the NASA High Reliability Hand Soldering curriculum (to the point of chemically cleaning components - cleaning the tip - cleaning the solder - using shears to cut the solder - defluxing to the point where we could literally see our reflections in the solder pad); non of which is relevant to the OPs issue.
All he needs is a simple heat bridge and a bit of flowing solder.
I have some of the cables I think you are referring to. I believe it's copper weld. Some substrate (iron, steel) with a thin copper plating. Mine are even magnetic.
Hi.
cleaning the tip - cleaning the solder -defluxing
Is relevant, a good tip cleaning pad is essential.
I don't have to worry at work about cleaning the solder, but if it looks a bit off shine then a quick runthrough of a piece in isopropyl helps.
Defluxing helps with close pads, like DIP or SMD components to view for inter-pad shorts.
Tom... 
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We could back and forth foreverā¦
Iām guessing youāre using a gas torch and solder bar? Flux on a brush ?
Carrying solder on a hot iron is exactly the first habit to lose when learning to solder
āTinningā the iron and leads is the second.
I don't disagree but the point I'm labouring to get across is that the OP doesn't need to complete a course to military specs to effectively join a couple of things together; yes, all of these things make for a better job - and yes, learning how to solder is a good investment of time ... but all of that will amount to nothing if the OP (who let's not forget is currently contemplating using electrical tape to make a connection and has already stated that he doesn't have time to learn to solder) gets scared off by all the well meaning but nonetheless anxiety-inducing advice (and attempted "point scoring" & one-upmanship) and choses to continue to put soldering in the too hard basket.
A simple heat bridge and dab of solder is all he needs to learn for now; it's OK to start with that and build better skills over time if they wish.
I'm a big believer in "teach a man to fish and you feed him for a day - but teach him how to fish and you've helped him feed himself for a lifetime"; all too often it seems people really want newbies to become French Chefs when they don't yet know how to boil an egg; and I suspect that often they get so put off by it that they never become French Chefs ... and never learn how to boil an egg either. If so then the advice has done more damage than good.
I also think there's a fine line (not aimed at you) between something that's genuinely helpful and something that more someone trying to start a p*ssing contest under the guise of "it's teaching them good habits so it's for their own good"; but that's probably a discussion better had at a different time and place.
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would you say electrical tape works okay?
Only if you are in Thailand where twist and tape is the norm.
Yall so funny!
Is there such a thing as a 3D solderable breadboard? I want to mount all of my chips and the battery holder together into a bundle to insert in a mason jar.
I want basic stability, so that light shakes don't knock the components against each other.
Not that I have seen, but why do you need a bread board? If you are going for that sort of thing, circuit art, then you assemble the circuit connected by tinned copper wire. The wire can be thick and hold itself rigid, then you can bend it to shape.
You can make the circuit look exactly like a schematic. When I was a post graduate we used to teach the skeleton method of construction for the undergraduate labs, so that the components could be reused.
One student managed to get it wrong and managed to make such a circuit out of not tinned copper, but solder. That takes some doing.
Hmm, what about options for PCB's with mounting screw holes?
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/132721059030?hash=item1ee6caa4d6:g:BCEAAOSw4-lak2nl
or......
https://jlcpcb.com/VGB?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI95XY4ZOY8QIVDK-WCh1vWAnXEAAYASAAEgK7lPD_BwE
Yeah, it would be super cool one day to formalize the design into a fixed PCB.
I think right angle headers can help to make a compact, 3D bundle.
I LOVE using right angle headers to keep the profile low.
I used to make a PCB for each magazine article I wrote. Back in those days you didnāt have China producing cheap ones. Minimum order was for 100 which made it expensive, especially at Ā£3 a board, and they were single sided for that price. Also in the 80s money was worth a lot more.
It was a lot of work producing one a month. It takes a lot of time to lay out, so these days I donāt bother, I use strip board. The exception is when you need to use surface mount stuff, so then I use cheap carrier boards to convert them to the normal 0-1 inch spacing.
Unless you are making more than one you donāt need a PCB.
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