ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Is this really a thing

Yes that is what I am talking about. One wire it left long and folded over but nobody has a solder pot these days.
I remember in middle school shop (late 1950s) we were learning about western union splices and soldering long after wirenuts were the industry standard. That was using the old resistance iron that was an inch (25mm) in diameter and took 10 minutes to get hot. I never actually used a solder pot.

I saw a Russian electrician use a solder pot on Youtube. For some reason they seem to love having lots of junction boxes in inaccessible spaces, which is why they use some kind of maintenance-free, permanent connection like soldering or crimping. The Germans mostly did away with junction boxes in the 80s, making connections behind sockets and switches instead.
There's a VDE standard on wire nuts ("Drehklemmen"), VDE 0613-2-4 based on EN 60998, even though I'm not aware of wire nuts ever having been widely used over there. Occasionally stores aimed at DIYers sell them, including the famous supermarket centre aisles (some discount supermarkets have an entire aisle devoted to random non-food products, e.g. clothes, shoes and the strangest power tools, Aldi recently sold a mini excavator).