In article ,
meirman wrote:

What is the best way to desolder?

I have tried solder wicks, single bulb solder suckers, pen-like solder
suckers, solder suckers with integrated soldering irons, and I've
tried heating the item and shaking off the solder.

My current best method is heating the solder and blowing it off with a
plastic soda straw. This sometimes leaves solder all over the place,
and I have to use my fingernail or a chopstick to nudge the solder off
places where it is shorting two connectors, or where it might fall and
short something (which is everywhere).

I ask now because I have, that I found in the trash years ago, about
12 Western Electric circuit boards, obsolete now, each with up to 7
6-pole double throw relays. Needless to say, Western Electric used
high quality relays, but when I try to desolder them from the boards,
I lose a lot of the connections (there are 20 of them), and often I
lose one of the two connections that goes to the relay coil, and I've
ruined the relay.

I need a better way to get these relays disconnected from the circuit
boards.

Help?

Back in the days when computer memory chips looked like sixteen-legged
caterpillars and cost a fortune each, a friend of mine got his hands on
a pile of circuit boards with dozens of the things soldered in.

His solution was to grab a board by the corner with pliers and hold it
in the flame of his kitchen stove until the solder turned all shiny. A
quick flip to bang the edge of the board, upside down, on the edge of
the stove, deposited all the chips -- and lots of solder splats -- on
the vinyl flooring.

Almost all the chips were good. He was happy; his wife was distinctly
*not*.

Isaac