Since no other navy nukes have chimed in on this thread to speak about ETMS—eutectic point is a huge piece of the puzzle and there are tradeoffs for selecting between 60/40 and 63/37. Fillets suck, bifurcated terminals are worse.

For any other Navy nukes, I wanted to link to a good reference on what ETMS is (was?) but couldn’t readily find anything. If anyone has a reputable link to publicly available course material on their solder grading rubrics or the 7-step, I’d be interested.

Not what you're asking for, but I have this from NASA in my bookmarks:

"THROUGH-HOLE SOLDERING GENERAL REQUIREMENTS"

https://workmanship.nasa.gov/lib/insp/2%20books/links/sectio...

This one might be relevant too (but it's too long for me to read through right now to confirm):

"Military Standard - Standard requirements for soldered electrical and electronic assemblies (1989)"

https://electromet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Electromet...

Was there an actual safe way to deal with this stuff besides maybe wearing a gas mask while you were working with it?

we had overhead vacuum suction on all the terminals in the training environment. On the sub, not so much, but if you’re soldering^ underway, it’s because shit has hit the fan so badly that a bit of lead inhalation is the least of your worries.

edit: if you’re ^soldering *Nuke* stuff underway, it’s because things have hit the fan, and that’s the whole point of ETMS. Other rates also solder underway and might also use (did use) lead, and perhaps none of our inhalation was warranted.

Why? Lead solder doesn't evaporate. The risk was always in recycling and maybe eating without having washed your hands. But you don't breathe in the solder, only the flux (which is even more toxic in lead-free solder applications).