T wrote:
>
> Believe it or not, the Rival electric skilets have another use. They're
> great for re-flowing solder on surface mount PC-Boards.
>
> The reason they're great is you have fairly granular control over the
> temperature and they're cheap.

My Sunbeam was used for desoldering chips from
surplus circuit boards, back when Dad was teaching
high school electronics. He'd remove the chips
from donated circuit boards, then repackage them
as kits for his students to build. He had a fairly
large selection of little gadgets the students
could build from recycled parts. This was back in
in the 1970's and 1980's when you could still do
that sort of thing. He even had a set up for
etching circuit boards for the kits.

Eventually, the rise of the personal computer
sucked away all of the students that would have
taken the electronics courses into studying software.
That, plus the shortage of qualified math teachers,
killed the electronics program. Dad spent the last
decade of his career teaching math.