talking of things in the past era, what about white lead. It had the consisdency of a paste and put on exposed threads and it set to a semi hard compound that could be removed with a sraper and wire brush leaving the thread like new
cheers
blaze
I have some of that
I also have the teflon based equivalent that does the same job.
I used it on all threads on pumps and crap that went down bore holes.
Silver frost was used to paint all steel pipework and upperdeck machinery in the RAN back in my days but was being phased out due to the lead content, it blended in well with neverseize at times ya never new which one you had on ya.