Joyce, Back in the old through hole days, when plating and fusing with peanut oil, the surface condition was primo and lasted in military use for years. Of course then we didn't know as much. Werner's comments on edge intermetallic growth, and possible oxidation on the edges as the plating "pulls" back to form the well known dome, make sense to me. However, my thoughts are of going back in time, or doing it now, and using a modern hot air reflow oven has me interested but the solder plating thickness would be a bit much using the old plating process requirement I think was ,0003" minimum but maybe it could be thinner now to achieve a flat surface. I think Teledyne's old operation, before whoever bought them discontinued using the process on component leads that soldered great, was the last to use it. Nothing has been the same since. Earl --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------