Great suggestions. A nice Weller station will make your life infinitely better. Another thing that helps make beautiful, clean solder joints is flux. I used to

Great suggestions. A nice Weller station will make your life infinitely better. Another thing that helps make beautiful, clean solder joints is flux. I used to stuff PCBs with surface mount components, and my general practice was to just swab flux over everything before soldering. Then, when you're done, you need to scrub the board in hot water to remove the flux, but it's worth the trouble.