"micky" wrote in message
...

It pays to save electronics scrap. I needed a short piece of thin but
not too thin single strand wire and I don't seem to have any except for
a collection of 8 wires soldered into an octal plug from a 1930's (or
40's or 50's?) radio. (the kind of plug that uses a tube socket)

IIRC, I got this 40 years ago and I think I got it from someone else's
scrap, so it's easily 60 years old. The red, blue, and brown wires are
quite pretty but the yellow? wires seem very dirty. I wonder why.

It's actually not single strand but the entire length of the
multi-strand is tinned.

Tinned anyway, yep, at times. I have some rubber
jacketed extension cords my dad used for an early
electric lawn mower that were done like that.

Isn't that a big waste of tin and lead?

Its very thin on the copper strand itself.

Do they still do that?

Havent noticed any.

Another interesting factoid: I needed to use for the first time some
liquid rosin flux (in a little bottle from MG Chemicals). I've had it
for 10 years unopened and it has one of those obnoxious caps that you
have to press down before turning. No matter how hard I pressed down,
it eventually ratcheted over what it was supposed to catch on. I tried
over and over, last night. This morning it opened on the second try!
The room temperature is about the same.

There is a real knack with some of those things.