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Ralph Mowery

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Reworking lead free with 60/40 sometimes gives a grainy finish that looks
even more dodgy than the original lead free.

When I was in TV repair, most Asian manufacturers had converted before most
people in the UK had even heard of RoHS. (but it took the Asian
manufacturers a lot longer to get it right).

My introduction to lead free solder was a steady stream of TVs with bizzare
random faults that defied any attempt at logical diagnosis - going over the
soldering fixed them as if by magic.

With Hitachi sets; you could push down on a component and the whole solder
fillet would detach from the other side, that revealed a thin black layer of
oxide on the copper.

On Sony sets; the solder looked as good as lead free ever can - but going
over the soldering fixed over 90% of all faults.

During that time I routinely used 60/40 - I didn't get many bounced repairs,
and not many of those had anything to do with solder.

I had a RCA (think that was the brand) that had a classic case of bad
solder around the tuner. This was in the days before the internet,but
there was the FIDO net that I found the solution of the problem. Went
over the solder around the tuner and it was good for about 2 years and
then had to do it again. Not sure what kind of solder was used way back
then as it was over 20 years ago. Seems that RCA had many solder issues
around tht period of time. Should have been a total recall for them.
Last thing I bought with the RCA name on it.