I agree: the rod container and the printed information in it are quite a little "time capsule". Eutectic is still in business, as "Eutectic Castolin" if I am not mistaken. Like so many firms, they are probably a part of some mega merged entity. I was surprised when I looked up several of the older "specialty" welding filler metal manufacturers to find they are either part of ESAB or some of the other bigger names.
I remember when I started my career, we used to get 50 lb cans of Lincoln electrode that were "real cans"- having a crimped seam around the ends. I remember the pipefitters and boilermakers would often open the cans by grinding thru the crimped seam and peeling back a portion of the end of the cans. Now, the 50 lb cans come with a "pop top"- a round section in one end that opens as you'd open a can (or tin) or some soups or foods.
Funny thing is recalling the matter of keeping the stick electrodes nice and dry- particularly the low hydrogen electrodes. On the regular jobs, we had the round "rod ovens"- usually painted a light green. The crafts took "rod cans" with them, each can holding enough electrode to see them through the day's work, and having its own heating element. In the everyday shops such as repair shops and town highway garages, the rod ovens were another matter. In winter, the cans of electrode would often be stacked on top of the wood stoves or waste-oil heaters. In many shops, the "rod ovens" were old home refrigerators with a 100 watt lightbulb hung inside. While not getting as warm as a regular rod oven, it kept the electrodes above the dew point of the ambient air.
I follow the oldtime backwoods approach to electrode storage: in winter, I stack my cans of electrode like cordwood on top of the smokebox of the coal fired heating boiler. The rod taken from the cans is usually so hot I have to wear gloves to handle it. Come spring and the heating boilers are cold. If I have Low Hydrogen electrode laying around in an opened can for any length of time (weeks or more), before getting out to a job, I will bake it in the kitchen oven for a couple of hours. Best to do this when my wife is not in the house as she might take exception to the idea of baking welding electrode in the same range that we cook our food in.
I was on one job at a nuke powerplant construction site. Babcock and Wilcox was on site, having supplied the reactor and steam generator. They had their own central "store" for welding filler metals, all of which were supplied with the usual documentation needed for nuke work. Instead of regular rod ovens, B & W had installed something like 8 or 10 electric "built in" ovens as would be used in home kitchens. The site carpenters had made a framework out of lumber and form plywood, and the ovens were set into it. Looked like an appliance showroom. There were calibration stickers on each oven attesting to the accuracy of the temperature controls. Each oven was packed with welding electrodes. On the day before Christmas, the tradition was for those jobsites to erupt into parties given by various contractors, various crews, unions, and departments. Rules as to alcohol on the jobsites were disregarded. Food of all sorts was brought onto the sites. Men cut oil drums in half and made grills, using rosebuds to start the charcoal fires. Other men took propane construction heaters and various things like pipe and plate and made ovens or stoves to heat up food. Food ranged from pans of lasagna and similar to venison, wursts, roasts, and anything that the men liked or thought their buddies would like. Warming up the food took priority, and partying was the order of the day. No work was expected to be done, and the jobsites were usually knocked off before lunch with everyone getting the day's pay. It was necessary to knock the job off before lunch as if management waited any longer, the site would have a large number of drunken people with some risk to themselves and others, let alone driving home. The warming of the food predictably resulted in the ovens used to keep the welding electrodes warm and dry being emptied or re-arranged so pans and pots of food could be put into them. Supposedly, the wall ovens in the B & W welding metals storage area were loaded with pans of food and this attracted the attention of an inspector or two. The result was that all the welding electrode in those ovens had to be destroyed so it could not be used. The inspectors feared contamination of the flux from the food being warmed in the ovens. As the story went, several guys were detailed to bend each piece of electrode into a "U" to render it useless and break off the flux. The amount of electrode lost was at least several hundred pounds, and the worst part was it was all electrode with the documentation, heat numbers and all else needed for use on nuclear work. No one was ever taken to task for putting food in those rod ovens.
On another job, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in winter, we used to put pasties (Cornish "turnovers"- dough crust pockets filled with chunks of beef, potato, rutabaga, carrots, and similar) in the rod ovens each morning to be nice and hot for our lunch. We figured the pasties, wrapped in foil, were pretty innocuous and we never heard anything about it. The only time there was a problem with food in the rod ovens on that job was when some guy put in a can of pork and beans. He forgot to vent the can with a small hole. He went out on the site to work and come lunch time, when the rod oven was opened, the pork and beans had exploded and blasted over the welding rod in that oven. The pork and beans and gravy it was in all soaked into the flux on the electrode and baked dry and hard. That was a load of electrode that went into the junk heap. Once again, no one was taken to task, not that anyone was 'fessing up or throwing anyone in the bag for it.
I was offered a load of "mystery" welding electrode last year. There must have been 100 lbs or so, and it was all 5/32" diameter. The electrodes had been out in the ambient atmosphere for so many years that the flux was crumbling and it was impossible to determine what alloy or designation the electrodes were. That load went in the dumpster.
I buy my stick electrode in 10 lb cans, and they have the "pop top" end. I burn my way through a few cans a month on various jobs. The empty 10 lb rod cans come in handy for holding things like bearing scrapers or fusees (railroad flares or road flares). The 50 lb rod cans used to be cut up for shim stock on some jobs overseas, and I knew some men took the old 50 lb rod cans (the kind the ends had to be opened at the seams) and deep fried breaded shrimp and breaded fish fillets in them on a jobsite. Those were the days when the big powerplants were being built in the USA and the jobsites were populated by a whole subculture of heavy construction people who were clannish and proud. It was a wilder time, and we had a lot more freedom and were not constantly being subjected to "corporate procedures", "mission statements", and being told about "political correctness" and told how corporate had merged with some other outfit or hired some more political whores as VP's. We were out on the jobsites and building powerplants and went where the jobs took us, a people apart from the regular population in the towns where the plants were being built. I was a part of it, and I look back on those times with fondness and the realization that the corporate button-down environment and the lack of any big powerplant projects in the USA has pretty much wiped out that era. I still have the stainless steel thermos with a handle made of stainless steel instrument tubing from my first job in 1972, and still wear a belt buckle made of stainless steel pipe and instrument tubing, TIG'd together in a welding test booth on a nuke job in 1973. Back "in the day", the handle on the thermos and the belt buckle were like wearing a lodge button, and even now, older men see my belt buckle and will ask me what jobs I worked on. As a Certified Welding Inspector, as well as a Professional Engineer, I still keep a hand in the work and still enjoy my profession. The electrode cans are stacked on top of the boiler down in our basement, awaiting another job or project. Not so classy as that old Eutectic container, and the new molded plastic electrode containers certainly do not have the class of that old Eutectic container either.