Thank you, I knew that paste does not stay good long, but three months.....
So? To solder small SMD opamp or such 8-16 pin bugger:
Tin one corner pad.
Hold part down and tack corner in place.
Nudge into alignment.
Tack other corner in place.
Drag solder chip with solder wire and a big chisel tip on the iron.
Thought it might be relevant to include a shot of our rework bench. This is where a lot of hand soldering happens.
From left to right.
Little PSU for bringing circuits up and testing them. (Current limiting is an absolute must have)
Fluke 115 Meter, we have a few of these, they are cheap and good.
Pot-o-flux and flux pen applicator. These little pump pots are handy, we use a bigger one for IPA..
Vacuum desoldering iron. Mostly crap, we don't use it much.
Atten inductive heating soldering iron. This thing is just fantastic, see below for a pic of the tip that pretty much lives on it next toa 1/4W resistor.. We solder quite a lot of 0.5mm pitch TQFP packages with that tip.
Another 115. (I said we have a few of them)
ATTEN hot air station.
Brass tip cleaner in holder.
Video microscope. This thing has a 2K output camera on it and a zoom lens. I often pull the whole thing forward and work under it if I'm doing anything smaller than 1mm pitch.