[HeyLaughingBoy]

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.

[hoopladler]

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.

[xyzzy_plugh]

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.

[hoopladler]

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.