Oh yeah, you're correct, i got confused with other types of solder with regards to the ceramic soldering strips.

Nothing. I don't think I've ever seen an illuminated underpass other than one that's now condemned below a train station, that one had regular 4ft fluorescent fittings protected by custom built grates, only 2-3 worked and the rest was dark.

Everyone avoids them at night so they don't need lights, and if I have to go through one I carry a pocket torch, the bus route I take is pitch dark at night, because all of the wiring for streetlights was overhead and stolen by copper thieves, there's only a few privately owned glarebomb LED floodlights but they only light up garage entrances.

Public streetlights aren't too common in my country, because of arcane legal shenanigans, the section of pavement (if any) between the road and your house is technically a part of your property, so the lighting is up to you. Only state-managed buildings have proper lighting outside, trainstations, and some large parks, but that's really it.

Some neighbourhoods have agreed to use the same type of lights so they purchase in bulk and they all look the same, -awful 6500K LEDs- but other parts of the city are whatever people had: floodlights, cheap flush mount luminaires, hanging holders with, there's strings too, and some old dead linear halogens that are dark patches now.

From what I have been aware of, I think FUL lamps may have originally bern developed by Japan's National/Panasonic lamp company sometime in the late 1970s to early 1980s.

Tektronix coincidentally used lead free solder for their special ceramic solder strips in their oscilloscopes, because the lead could interfere with the bond between the actual metal lug and the ceramic. My Tek 454a contains a tiny roll of that solder to ensure repair people don't use lead based solder on those solder strips, because back in the day no one had lead free solder on hand.

Sorry, but you are not right here. The problem with ceramic strips is just the silver layer quickly dissolving in molten solder. A common solution to this is to use a solder already saturated with a bit of silver. Leaded or lead-free, does not matter. A quote from vintagetek.org : 


"Special silver-bearing solder is used to solder wires and components directly to the
notches in ceramic strips and has a composition of 60% tin, 37% lead, 3% silver. This silver-bearing solder should be used when soldering or repairing ceramic strips which prevents the silver bonded to the ceramic from dissolving in the molten solder. Failure to use the correct silver-bearing solder on Tektronix ceramic strips can result in failure of the silver to ceramic bond.  Tektronix would include a small spool of silver-bearing solder for repair in some of its instruments."

https://vintagetek.org/ceramic-strips/

For your personal projects you of course do not have to satisfy RoHS requirements, so you can use whatever solder you want.

60/40 and 63/37 eutectic solders are easier to work, and give better looking solder joints. There is no problem with lead solder toxicity. Lead does not evaporate at soldering temperature. May be you should be a bit careful with fine powdered solder like when you are emptying desoldering pump, but just wash your hands afterwards. And that's all, no need to worry.


Lead / lead free incompatibility is significantly overhyped. Yes you can remove old lead-free solder with a wick to get better looking shiny joints, but at hobby level, reliability is not significantly compromised even if you omit that step. For the naysayers, it is even professionally considered OK to mount BGA chips having lead-free balls with leaded soldering paste.

If you're talking about the forum and gallery software, L-G went with Coppermine Photo Gallery and Simplemachines Forum. But Simplemachines is old and not very elegant, so you might want to use Discourse instead. Discourse is elegant and full-featured. See how it looks-on the Straight Dope Message boards. You might have to create your own login/signup window that logs you into/signs you up for the forum and gallery at the same time. All three of these software solutions are open-source. I do not recommend closed-source for a forum software or most web stuff for repairability reasons.Have fun making the site! 

As an HID guy, I don't hate LED. My beef with LED in the beginning was that they didn't get even close to there rated life before EOL, and with their high price, that soured many folks...quickly. The other issue was LED luminaires were/still un-serviceable...if it fails, it goes to the recycle bin...waste of resources. HID on the other hand was field serviceable/repairable.

I guess we think the same things. I quite agree with you.

It's the larger appliances that are even more fun. Major appliances from the 70s and 80s are basically indestructible and are built like tanks. For example nothing can compete with a Kenmore washer or dryer of this vintage. I had a Kenmore dishwasher go for 22 years before it finally quit and that was nightly use and in those 22 years it never once needed repairs but my brother and a retired appliance repairman got it running again. I love the powerful motors on old appliances nowadays they just spit water onto the clothes or dishes. Or the click and hum when the fridge compressor kicks on. As for electric clocks who knows how long the motors in those last especially if they are GE.

I very much agree!!!!!!!Although I am not interested in kitchen appliances per se, I still think old 70s and 80s appliances have character, and I love the look. It's way better than anything made with an austere modern look. Old stuff for the win!

Well said

I felt this way recently, just because you don’t upload much doesn’t mean you’re unimportant to this site. Additionally, there are plenty of members that don’t upload anything at all.

I hardly upload anything at all. I still enjoy this site. I think I belong.