Sixty years ago this month, under the headline “Soldering Savvy,” the September 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics offered this self-explanatory helpful hint. Of course, it was taken for granted that you should wear a tie when soldering, so they don’t even mention that. The hint was to just hold the solder between your teeth if you need both of your hands to do the job.

While, chances are, no harm was done, solder contains lead, and it’s generally not a good idea to ingest lead, even in small quantities. So putting it in your mouth, or even eating a sandwich after soldering, probably isn’t a good idea, and we don’t recommend it.

Fortunately, you no longer need to do this, since you can get one of the handy gadgets here to hold your work while you use one hand to hold the iron, and the other hand to hold the solder. It makes life a lot easier, and you don’t have to worry about lead poisoning.

And while were at it, this guy’s boss would probably get fined a few million dollars today by OSHA. In addition to wearing a tie that might get caught in machinery, he’s not wearing any safety glasses. Occasionally, little bits of hot resin, or even molten lead, go flying when you’re soldering, and it would be a bad thing if one of them landed in your eye. So, invest a couple of bucks in a pair of safety glasses or goggles. As with everything, you can find all of these things at Amazon:

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