New Member; old dog seeking new tricks

Greetings! I started soldering and desoldering stuff nearly 50 years ago, and somehow only recently got back into electronic stuff.

I quickly realized two things:

1) I've never done any surface mount soldering so I don't have those skills, and

2) My new temperature-controlled pencil iron works great for small jobs but doesn't put out enough heat to melt non-lead-solder enough to desolder through-hole capacitors.

2a) My ancient Radio Shack solder-sucker iron (has a rubber bulb and...