Hi everybody,

Actually, I find that I prefer to use Scotchbrite to steel wool to scrub my bare boards, but I don't scrub them for cleaning purposes. I make my bare boards with a mechanical router so scrubbing for me is about deburring, not de-oxidizing.

Anyway, the mention of steel wool reminded me that I used to read somewhere that you should never use steel wool pads that are pregnated with soap (e.g. S.O.S Pads). If I recall correctly the warning was that the soap residue would interfere with solderability.

However, I can tell you from experience, from back in the day when I still made my boards with photosensitive etch resist and acid, that I always used S.O.S brand scouring pads to clean off the photoresist from the etched boards. I always made sure to thoroughly rinse the boards afterwards and never had any problems getting good solder wetting.

Still, I suppose if you use such a scouring pad and don't rinse off all of the soap residue you could have solderability problems. And maybe a good way to avoid the issue altogether is just to avoid using the soap-laden steel wool pads.