Got it. Whenever we come across a dead marker, we throw the board away and get a blackboard instead!
About that, could we have a similar article on blackboards and chalk? All I know is that there was much ado [0,1,2] about a certain Japanese manufacturer shutting down a couple of years ago. They, allegedly, made the best chalk and prices on the secondary market rose high after the news came out.
I bought a 20 year supply of that chalk when the demise of Hagoromo was announced, but it turns out that production of that particular product was turned over to a Korean company. I’m still using my legacy supply, so I can’t comment first-hand on old/new comparisons, but I haven’t heard any complaints.
I used to have the pleasure of working in an office with genuine slate blackboards. They were very pleasant to write on (the chalk seemed to need less pressure to make a nice line and they always cleaned up perfectly), but using them was rather dusty.
Leaded solder is actually generally better for your health (just don’t eat it). The unleaded stuff has really nasty flux, and requires much higher temperatures, meaning the fumes are quite a bit worse. Make sure you have very good ventilation when working with unleaded solder.
Completely as an aside to the thread, if you're doing this a lot, try Kester K100 alloy, which is much lower melting than the first generation Pb-free, and behaves a lot more nicely. Not like genuine PbSn, but closer. Techni-Tool has spools of it in different diameters.
About that, could we have a similar article on blackboards and chalk? All I know is that there was much ado [0,1,2] about a certain Japanese manufacturer shutting down a couple of years ago. They, allegedly, made the best chalk and prices on the secondary market rose high after the news came out.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/3a05u3/why_mathematic... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/3axqxe/hagoromo_presi... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/3rciv0/an_update_on_w...