If you lose the protective tip for your tweezers a plastic wall anchor works well.
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Solder Paste Dispensing Tool
It can be difficult to get: repeatable, small drops, and accurately placed solder paste onto your SMD pads.
You can make an effective hand tool to deposit solder paste on the pads.
An inexpensive, stainless steel pair of food tongs can be modified to make this tool.
Tongs cost about $15.00 (unmodified).
Your choice of tongs should have the side walls at 90 degrees to the tong grips.
The images below show what needs to be modified and the results you can get.
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Components that make up the Solder Paste Tool.
Note: alternatively, you can glue the Acrylic Guide in place with epoxy or Super Glue with activator.
Syringe bushings are made from clear plastic tubing/hose found in hardware stores.
This solder paste tool makes one solder paste drop per squeeze (size depends on push duration).
No oozing if the tool isn’t pressed.
- 24G (pinkish colour) blunt tips work great, keep tip covered air tight when not in use.
- 9” tongs
F I N I
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If you have access to a 3D printer you can easily make one of these
Much less low tech, but on IC's, LED's, etc., that have multiple pins that aren't .1", many times you can bend the even pins to match a .1" board spacing using a small screwdriver.
Bend all the even pins together 90 degrees away from the odd pins. Bend the odd pins 90 degrees from the evens. Put a small screwdriver across the center. Bend the pins back towards the original direction using the screwdriver to keep spacing between them.
I use this all the time for RGB LED's.
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Hi Larry,
Thank you very much for this nice article.
Could you tell us more about your flex shaft tool ?
Installation, model...and différent uses for you ?
It's always fun to read the things that you do. Thank you !
First off, the flex shaft tool and optional drill press are an bit expensive. 
However, IMO, they are worth every dollar you pay !
I only use them for electronics projects.
This is the motor set I bought many years ago:
The drill press has next to no play in the machining ! 
FYI
when the solder sucker and the desoldering braid fail to clean the hole in a solder pad:
for DuPont .100 pins. twist by hand.
In Re:
do not roughly measure center to center distance. if both screws are the same size, edge to edge distance is exactly equal to center to center distance, if the ruler edge touches the center of both screws. ergo, precisely measure edge to edge distance
free, if you have a pile of deceased HDDs. If you have a steel drain plug, sump plate, or crankcase on your ride, attach one or more of these to capture steel particles in the oil.
like a Dremel tool or a scroll saw: you don't know how useful it is until you have one. turn an electrical box cover into a serious mounting bracket for antennas. bend 16 gauge with a box end wrench, or 1/8" steel with an air impact wrench.
Melt the solder on the pad and push through the appropriate sized needle. Being Stainless Steel the solder does not stick to the needle and the hole is left open when the needle is withdrawn
Being hollow they can, in theory, be used to desolder a through hole component lead but I have never had much luck with that
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An assortment of stainless steel blunt syringe needles is also available.
Also, stripped stranded wire added to the solder hole, then drawn thru the hole while heating the wire/pad is quite effective.
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Add a little flux to the stranded wire and it is solder wick
Solid wire also works.
This shows the process:
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There are times when we must work on an item in it's vertical position.
Rubber O Ring(s) added to your Knipex pliers does a great job at holding work while soldering or making repairs.
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Then it's time for a PanaVise.
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I have one of those kits, invaluable when a plated through hole will not desolder properly due to mid layer ground plain on a multilayer PCB sucking the heat away.
Tom... 
My method of how to make an 8 LED bar graph.
Just cut after the 8th LED.
I sanded the end so it was smooth, I would recommend gluing opaque plastic on the end.
You can glue to cut ends together as I have done.
Hint: shave off a bit more plastic before gluing the to ends together to get standard pin spacing.(Mine are bent 
)
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Wooden tooth pick works as well.
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I often used needles as the solder does not tend to stick to them.
Heat the solder and push the needle through has gotten me out of a lot of little jams.
Wife never noticed her stock going down LOL.
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My solder/desolder station came with a set of cleaning needles.
Some smooth, some with a bit of an abrasive end, and they seem to be very similar to stainless steel material.
The smaller ones also seem to work very well for this purpose.
I'm careful with the abrasive ended ones, wouldn't want to destroy plated holes.