In article ,
"Wild_Bill" wrote:

I've only heard that it was a relatively common procedure/quick fix, not so
much what an actual plumber would perform regularly (not much money involved
with not replacing parts/pipes), but more of a quick solution for those who
had welders available.. rural areas, for example, where calling plumbers
wasn't a common solution to a problem. Totally self-sufficient, common sense
folks of past generations.

I know that resistance soldering (discussed here recently) will nearly
instantly take a connector contact to over 700 F.. that's a couple of turns
of an AC transformer secondary winding shorted, but in very close proximity
to the short.. yes, the voltage does drop to a very low value, but very
rapid heating of a small part is the result.

I would like to try the welder procedure, but haven't found myself in a
situation where I could. I've heard that the procedure works effectively,
from various serious/sincere and experienced guys, since the 60s.

Utterly common. There's even a specific setting (75 amps?) on a Lincoln
tombstone (ac) that's rated for 100% duty cycle (on what is otherwise a
20% duty cycle welder) for the purpose, though we had the welder come
out with his truck-mounted unit when the water caught (slang for froze)
before we re-did the line deeper and in plastic (where this won't work
anyway.) He had a long set of cables for the purpose, and it was regular
winter business for him. Likely his truck unit was DC or AC/DC.

It's not much of a "short" with the typical iron water pipes of the time
running a few hundred feet. Copper outside the house was never common in
our area, at least - iron followed by a shift to black plastic. Better
than the areas with water systems that had lead outside the house...

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