Personally I hate lead-free solder with a passion, the stuff is horrible. It's a nuisance to solder with, an absolute pain to rework, and always gives a joint that looks awful even when it's fine. Add to that the fact that 99% tin solder has a number of known long-term failure modes, and it's just a nasty solution to the problem.
Exactly what we have discovered with lead free solder, it just doesn't work. Add together with what you've said and the fact that the tin can grow whiskers and short stuff out at a later point, it's an absolute disaster.
We still can't work out why it's the electronic industry that has borne the brunt of this? Take for example the considerably larger amount of lead that is used by the automotive industry.
We use JBC irons which we love, they're great to work with. Tips can be expensive but using the metal sponge we've now managed to work around the original oxidising that we were getting since the move to lead free.
We've got a pile of dead weller irons, infact their only use recently has been for "trade in" value when buying JBC irons, I think we got £50 off each iron by giving the dealer our scrap wellers!
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