More Thoughts on Lead

Bought a bunch more rolls of inexpensive 63-37 tin-lead solder as I am almost out of the roll that I bought in December. 🗞 I’ve tried to work with the 96.5% tin, 3% silver, and 0.5% copper lead-free solder that is but it’s really difficult to get the temperature right for soldering it, to say nothing of making it stick properly to lower-grade aluminum wire and pins.

I kind of wish I could make the non-lead stuff work well, but it’s not easy.🚬 The flux that burns off of lead-solder is much less noxious then the flux that is in core of most lead-free solder, which is a big deal in the winter for me when I do most of my soldering in my bedroom, especially with the drafty windows in my apartment forcing me to use a fan to blow the smoke from the flux in the opposite direction.

I get that lead is nasty stuff when people ingest leaded material. 👏 Lead causes all kinds of health problems, it literally causes mental retardation in human brains, especially when they are developing. Lead and lead dust is something you want to wash off your hands after you have been handling it — whether it’s the large batteries people use for storing electric energy in automobiles and solar installations, after shooting leaded ammunition at the range or hunting, using as lead sinkers for fishing — and so forth.🎣

There are lots of materials out there that replace lead. Unfortunately, most of them are inferior — and not just for cost. As I’ve noted before, non-lead ammunition preforms worse as it’s lighter, damages firearms, and is heck of lot more expensive.🔫 Soldering electronics, as I noted before is difficult with non-lead. Fortunately, for manufacturing purposes in temperature controlled environments, non-lead soldering works fairly well, 🎮 although non-lead solder doesn’t last as long as leaded material, but with most electronics ending up in landfill, incinerator, or burn barrel a few years after being manufactured — I guess it’s a good thing they’ve moved to lead-free for industrially manufactured products. Not to mention lead-free solder is much better for the environment for the few electronic products which do actually get chopped up and melted down to be recycled, especially in the institutional environment.