How small is "too small" here? I'm by no means an expert at soldering but with some patience I can hand solder down to 0603 components, and I know people who ca

How small is "too small" here? I'm by no means an expert at soldering but with some patience I can hand solder down to 0603 components, and I know people who can go much smaller than that (right down to the sort of thing where if you sneeze finding the components you just scattered around is like finding a specific grain of sand on the floor). You can get practice boards for next to nothing online if you don't want to risk damaging high value components.