There's two techniques that I find work very well for SMD ICs for hand assembled boards: - hot air rework wand. I got mine from China for $100. It works awesom

There's two techniques that I find work very well for SMD ICs for hand assembled boards: - hot air rework wand. I got mine from China for $100. It works awesome both for removing parts and for melting paste. - flood & wick. You start by tacking down two corners of the chip, and then drag the tip with some solder along the full edge. You'll probably get some bridging between pins. Sometimes, when the moon is aligned just right, you just get a perfect solder. For the times when you don't, the next step is to take a bit of fresh wick and clean it up. Between these two tools (cheap Chinese reflow wand $100, and a nice Hakko iron $100), I've probably hand-assembled 75-100 prototypes and I don't recall ever destroying one. My next trick is going to be trying to do some BGA parts... new experiences!