I did buy some scrap boards from sparkfun and got a few samples to practice with.
It was awful.
I did purchase Sparkfuns Heaterizer XL-3000 knowing that it wasn't entirely capable of solder rework and such, although this guy did all this with it.
http://bodger.dreamwidth.org/17113.html
I'm hoping that it'll be able to help me out with the soldering a bit, especially with the QFN tlc5940