lubricant for zinc and aluminum alloys

Nice, I wouldn't mind having one. Need to stumble on a deal :)

I would try something like Permatex Anti-Seize:

Not sure where you live but Menards use to carry it and sometimes put it on sale for ~$5.

Sorry, should have mentioned that they have different types too:

I'd just throw on your favorite anti seize compound and call it a day.

I just assembled one of these:

It was under $16, delivered, or it can be bought from Home Depot. There are just four screws to put the end bars on the bottom, and it took under a minute.

I have several of the Panavise holders, but this takes up less bench space. The Panavise were Hamfest finds, 25+ years ago, for $15 each. They were from a closed down electronics plant, in Bushnel Florida.

Do you buy all your electronics needs from Home Depot, Mikey? That's certainly a strange source for a PCB vise. I love it!

A miniature pipe-style vise with rotating jaws came with a Locksmithing course back in the '80s. It has a suction cup base which is still working today, amazingly. Must be EPDM or Viton rather than plain rubber.

Question to the group: What in the hell gives Chinese rubber the ghastly smell it has? Ye gads, that stuff reeks. Whenever I buy something with Chi rubber in it, it has to sit outside for a minimum of two weeks to degas.

Try buying a better class of condoms -- the single-use ones, next time.

I like it, would have been nice to have back when I was working.

The Panavise holders as I remember them were a lot more robust than your ebay item. A LOT more expensive too. Nowadays I would like one for holding odd shaped items now and them. They had quite the jaw span.

The PanaVise 366 Wide Opening Head or Panavise Model 376 Self-Centering Wide Opening Head would probably be a better choices...

We have a whole lot more affordable choices nowadays :)

I bought it from that Ebay link that I posted. I saw from a sponsored ad at the bottom of the listing that you could buy it through Home Depot. The package was drop shipped from Amazon.

They use several different types of synthetic rubber. Some smell bad, and some don't.

It will come in handy for boards up to about 9.375" wide. The two clamps are about 2.5" above the crossbar. The spring applies decent tension, to keep a board from slipping. Unlike the Panavise, you can center the work area between the clamps, to make it fairly steady. The Panavise, I often needed to remove the bard and turn it arround to make it steady enough to desolder components.

The wider they were, the harder it was to keep them stable.

The Panavise have option solder reel holders, but I prefer to have the roll sitting near where I'm working. It allows for a lower profile, which is better on my wrists.

I used to save old plastic Solder Wick holders. Rewind them with solder. Had my go-to 63/37 x .031, a Silver Solder alloy and a finer

60/40 x .020. That way I could write what they were on the container and they were easy for me to handle. Had some really big stuff too, that would stay rolled up on its own in short lengths...

I used maybe a pound a year, suspect you go through a whole lot more...

Thanks for getting me to go look at what the sizes were. I found a new roll of 63/37 x .031 that I forgot I had. That was my favorite and I thought it was pretty much all gone :)

I reused the spools for homemade wick. I had a couple hundred cords from CATV converter wired remotes. I would pull out the center conductors, then pull out the bare copper braid. I would flatten the braid, and wind it into the spools. I had several quart bottles of Kester 1544 flux, I used the wet wick method, which did less damage to circuit boards.

I recently caught a large lot of wick on Ebay. Probably enough to last the rest of my life.

At one time, I used up to a pound a month. That was when I built a lot of stuff from scratch for my shop and custom items for schools. I also built a lot of kits for people who decided they couldn't do it for themselves. That was 40 years ago. I charged $15 to $20 an hour, but it usually took me 1/3 of the estimated time suggested by the manuals. :)

I prefer 63/37, in .o62", .031" and .015". My favorite brand in Multicore, but I will use Alpha or Kester if I have to. Too many problems with other types, because of their choice of flux.

I wonder the same. The smell of harbor freight is truly horrible.

It's from rancid animal fats used to make the rubber. Don't ask what kind of animals.

It's nothing like -any- kind of rancid odor I've smelled. More of a chemical odor, but I'll look into the possibility. Do you have cites, by any chance?