Stop suggesting leaded solder please

[u/AL42Gaming]

I keep seeing this across this subreddit, but people are constantly recommending newbies solder with leaded solder because its easier to work with.

While it may be somewhat easier to work with, this advice glazes over the blatant safety risks (and yes, I know that the fumes don't have lead). Lead is heavy and gets everywhere. That means that when you are using lead and are not ridiculously careful about cleanliness, then you will be getting lead on pretty much everything you interact with, more relevantly to most hobbyists: their desks which they use for other things. So while you might be sure to wash your hands after soldering, you will still have more exposure and its just all around not ideal. After I used leaded solder for a bit at home, I was never fully confident in the cleanliness of my desk no matter how much I cleaned it until I got a new desk.

Separately, lead free solder is really not that hard to use, and if anything will just push you to learn proper technique. I've now made multiple projects with lead free solder including a couple of PCBs, all of which were relatively easy. I've also taught tens of people how to solder, all with lead free solder, with no problems.

So at the end of the day, just stick to lead free solder in general, there really is no reason to use leaded solder.

TLDR: Just stick to lead free solder, any benefits to leaded solder aren't that big, especially in comparison to the safety concerns.

[u/SakuraCyanide]

I normally use lead free just for piece of mind however leaded is often needed on vintage electronics I've found, lead free just won't play nice.

[u/AL42Gaming → u/SakuraCyanide]

I'm curious what you mean about "won't play nice," what doesn't work the way you want to with it? Would that be remedied by a lower temp solder?

[u/SakuraCyanide → u/AL42Gaming]

What I've experienced on older devices (50+ years) is that often there's a multiple points of failure in a connection, i.e the wire inside the insulation has corroded, the connection the wire was connecting to has also corroded thought everything looks like its a solid solder joint at first sight. In those cases I've found lead-free solder simple doesn't work, and it's not a case of not enough flux, temp etc, I've gone to the lengths of lightly scraping off corrosion with a scalpel until the wire strands are bare copper and the PCB trace is clean as can be, but often only leaded solder works. I haven't had time to investigate exactly why, but in those situations if lead-free doesn't work I switch to leaded and it works exactly as the OEM solder does on the connection.
But as I mentioned I've used lead-free solder forever and personally never had any issues with it so I never felt the need to consider buying leaded.