We mainly do SMT at our hackerspace, as it is really is fast and easy to do by hand using a hot-air gun (e.g. [1]). Use a syringe to deposit solder paste (we have one which uses compressed air, very convenient! Something like [2]) and a binocular to see what you're doing and you will be golden.

[1] http://www.aoyue.eu/aoyue-int998-smd-rework-station-hot-air-... [2] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/220V-AD-982-Semi-Auto-Glue-D...

How does this compare to doing it with a normal soldering iron? I just ordered a bunch of surface-mount components - just because they were so much cheaper, but I haven't really got any notion about good approaches yet.

I'd recommend that a beginner go with the iron. It's all too easy to overheat components with a hot air gun, unless you have one with excellent temperature control. Even then, you need to be aware of accidentally desoldering nearby components.

I've got pretty bad essential tremor (and bad eyeseight), so I was also wondering, what's a good way to keep the chips in place on the board? I was thinking of using a tiny dab of superglue.

I am in a similar boat and I've found the easiest solution is to just find a friend who is better at soldering and a case of beer.

Even with practice I'm orders of magnitude slower than people with steady hands.

I guess I figure you don't have to be good at something for it to be worthwhile. As a human, no matter how steady your hand or sharp your eye, you're always going to be inferior in manufacturing basically anything than our new robotic overlords.

The main thing I like about electronics is it makes me feel at home in a world of technology that's kinda crazy alien at least half of the time. Being able to interact with it in a proactive way makes it something I can get a grip on, even if, when we're frank, my soldering is shit.

I do have a side business building custom electronics, but I think I still qualify as hobbyist :-)

I do both: for small fixes I solder by hand. Complete boards I usually use an old toaster oven, but often if the boards are really small, I use a soldering iron. I try not to go below 0805, but 0603 isn't hard.

I typically won't get a stencil for custom one-off jobs since they tend to be small and ordering them introduces delay. When I do, I use oshstencils.com. Had great luck with them and they are very price competitive.

Thanks for your answers, I appreciate it. And same to the others who answered my original question!

> I do have a side business building custom electronics, but I think I still qualify as hobbyist :-)

Taking this even further off-topic, could you elaborate a little? What kind of stuff are you doing? I imagine there is a niche for one-off or small batch stuff, but OTOH on aliexpress (or whatever) you can find almost every electronic gimmick you can imagine (and plenty you couldn't imagine!) for ridiculously low prices.

Use a toaster oven or a skillet, they both work great!

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/60

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59

I've been skilletting my boards (fabbed by OSHpark) for the last few months, and it's really easy. As another commenter mentioned, use a syringe to deposit solder paste. It only takes a few boards to dial in the right amount to lay, and is actually surprisingly quick to place the parts (even 0603) with tweezers and then throw 'em on the skillet.