"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Mary Fisher wrote:
I thought it was used for the old-fashioned 'wiped joints'

It was - for preventing oxidation on newly cleaned lead. But it's been
superseded by flux.

I think they serve different purposes. Tallow will *prevent* solder
amalgamating? with lead etc.


I used to use it when building lead acid batteries many moons ago, it was
used to prevent the molten lead (that was used to 'weld' the plates
together) from adhering to the steelwork of the tooling used to hold the
plates at the correct spacing.

If we were short of tallow we could get away with using the black soot from
the burning of neat acetylene across the steel....