Leaded solder.

It's only banned for commercial use, as I understand it. I get mine from Rapid Electronics.

This is the one I use (slightly lower melting point), but theer are lots of others including the old favourites:

IT'S OK, found it on Ebay, sorry should have looked there first. Don

Thanks for that Bob, have purchased some on Fleabay. Cheers Don

It has been banned for new production. It can still be bought for repair etc reasons. IIRC, it is still allowed for 'critical' new applications like medical and military which says much about how good the lead free stuff is.

You'll not find it in Maplin, though. I get mine from Rapid electronics.

In message , Donwill writes

cpc still sell it

geoff ( snipped-for-privacy@uk-diy.org) wibbled on Sunday 27 February 2011 11:06:

Yep - still perfectly legal for non-sale use (ie a company can make widgets for itself but cannot sell them) - and also (for sale) - exempted products, which include, but are not limited to, automotive electronics.

So, rest assured, it is not going away...

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

RS components still sell it for repairs of course;)..

In message , tony sayer writes

Yes, but you wouldn't actually buy it from RS would you (even if they had it in stock, which seems to be the exception rather than the rule nowadays)

In message , Tim Watts writes

It'll just get extortionately expensive

geoff ( snipped-for-privacy@uk-diy.org) wibbled on Sunday 27 February 2011 19:44:

Fortunately it's not hard to buy a lifetime's supply :)

In message , Tim Watts writes

For you maybe - we get through about 25 x 500g reels / year

Luckily I still have a good stock of leaded solder for the occasional times I use it.

But it had crossed my mind about the reliability of lead free solder and the likelihood of dry joints etc in the future. And, too, it had crossed my mind that I didn't expect that the military would be using lead free with its inherent problems.

I have an expensive but now dead Toshiba LCD TV that was probably soldered in lead free and went faulty within 3 yrs of purchase.

So it's OK for consumers to take the hit with lead free but not the military.

I expected as much.

lead free crap it certainly is.

Oh - forgot to mention. And I bet they are still allowed to use proper creosote too for essential applications like wooden support poles for military antenna arrays.

Well, domestic goods aren't likely to prove fatal if they fail - oh. hang on a mo...

In message , Booty writes

What's the difference between the original creosote and the new stuff? [I don't mean the stuff that could easily be a form of thinned-down, water-based, acrylic paint.]

Just before the 'old' creosote was discontinued, I bought a couple of gallons of it. Later on, I bought some 'new' stuff (about twice the price). I haven't really used any yet. To be honest, they seem very similar. So, what's 'new'?

I bought some creosote in the January sales - genuine stuff! It had just been hiding on a dusty shelf in the back of their warehouse.

"New" creostuff seems to depend a lot on who made it. Anything with a TV-ad brandname on it isn't worth opening the tin.

Creosote hasn't been discontinued. You can still buy it fairly readily (but not in the sheds!).

Creosote is much more effective as a fungicide therefore prevents rot a lot better.

It's also much cheaper than the new stuff (which seems about as effective as wood dye)!

In article , geoff scribeth thus

Well we still use RS and in many ways there're very good, but if we were buying volumes and or quantities we might go elsewhere but more often than not what we need is needed now and rather obscure..

More often than not I've placed the order and got the ack from them by the time I've found item One anywhere else.. Especially CPC...