At the risk of stating the obvious.............. though it did not occur to me till today.

After some time of using my soldering block it becomes pitted and contaminated with stray bits and pieces, making balls becomes a bit hit and miss if I cannot find a very flat bit, they slump into a puddle and stick solid and various other soldering jobs needing a nice flat surface are made difficult.

Well today I went at an old with with an orbital sander for five minutes and lo and behold a nice new flat surface. I realise you cannot keep doing this as it will eventually become thinner to the point of not protecting that which is below it but it certainly extends the life of a block before it is only fit for being chopped up to use as supports.