There are small eyelets in several styles that you can use to create
thru-hole barrels. Both get mechanically swaged at both ends to contact the
copper layers.
If you are hand soldering you simply have to heat the pad & barrel on both
sides and flow a minimal amount of solder - voila - same result a PTH's.
Try Kester Solder Co. Theirs come in break-apart sticks.

Chris
>  my next question.
>
>  Are there any techniques used for soldering a component on
> both sides of the
> board?  What I mean is that it's easy to solder the bottom
> side of the board
> since it's just the component leads that stick out... but on
> the top side, I
> have to sorta squeeze the iron between the board and the
> component - this can
> easily burn the component, and it looks kind of messy since
> the component isn't
> all the way down against the board. But I can't think of any
> other way to
> solder it to the top tracks??? I hope I have explained myself clearly,
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jai
>

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