Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

I second that about long solder paste life for hand soldering. For the SMT
pick and place machine with very small parts we are very careful about the
shelf life. But for hand soldering I have a tube that has been kept in the
fridge and it is over 10 years old and it still works fine.
Bertho
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From dl5012 Sent: Friday, December 31, 2010 12:50

Hi Jan,
I don't have any recommendations for purchasing solder paste, but have some
experience with so-called expired paste.
I have 2 600g tubes of Kester solder paste that expired about 2 years ago
and I'm still using it. I had been told by someone that it could be
rehydrated with IPA, but my paste hasn't dried out enough that I've needed
to hydrate it and the flux is still doing it's job. I store mine in an
unheated basement.

Flux has a shelf life, but I have a roll of solder from the 70's and the
flux core is still working.
Don't know of any inexpensive sources for 10 mil solder wire. I rarely use
anything smaller than 32 mil.
Regards,
Dennis