I have cleaned of numerous boards over the years with a torch. If I have several boards to do I work on them in rotation to allow them to cool between heatings. I work in small zones, grasping it firmly away from the heat. I first heat the board and hitting it on the table parts side up. This causes most of the solder in the holes and on the topside of the board to "flow" through the board and onto the cardboard leaving fairly clean holes and pins if I do it right. A second pass of heat followed by a sharp rap on the table, parts side down, will make a nice little pile of parts to pick up once they are cool. The trick is to get it hot enough for the solder to flow and let inertia carry the solder out of the holes, when the board makes a sudden stop against the edge of the bench. To remove the parts that did not fly off in the previous impact, an inspection a pin straighten if required and a second quick heating followed by a sharp deceleration component side down will liberate all but the most stubborn of chips. The board will continue to hold heat far longer than the parts, so let it cool before working on other zones. This works best if you are going for selected parts on a number of boards and don't care about the other junk on the card. While doing this I have a good solder sucker and some solder-wick on hand for the stubborn ones. A small collection of hand tools come in handy for bent over pins and forceful removal of disobedient parts. I have a favorite screwdriver that has been bent into a mini prybar that gets under chips and pops the last hold of stuck pins quite nicely. Hope this helps, If I remember, I will take a few pictures next time I do it and put them on the website somewhere. It is more of an art than a science. It takes a bit of practice to get the correct heat and edge banging necessary to achieve the desired results. Without injury or undesirable damage. Don't forget to use a cardboard target to wrap the edge of the board on ! It provides a small amount of shock absorbing and quickly becomes covered with solder spray. For those of you lucky enough to still have good vision, find some glasses and keep it. I have a set of old computer glasses that I use because they have a nice focal point so I can see the solder flow for heat control. My reading glasses put my face way too close for comfort ! Unless you are a welder or get of on stinging little burns this in not a t-shirt activity. I de-soldered 3,000+ 4116 dram chips from some large Storage cards in the early 80's tested and sold them in sets as 16k upgrades for apple/pet/trs80/ect... at an early computer show in the Chicago Area. That brings back some old memories, hours of de-soldering testing and cleaning chips, took them to the show sold them cheep and sold out in 4 hours. Turned the booth over to a friend sell some of his junk for the second day and never looked back. Any of the old timer around here know what happened to Terry of Midwest Micro Lombard fame ? I am willing to bet he still has his Apple 1 :) I only had one set, slip through testing, I sent the guy a replacement and a spare, and counted one more happy camper :) Last thought, Radio shack has a nice butane torch that works well for one chip at a time. For larger areas a self lighting propane torch with a stand is best. Cut up a heavy cardboard box as a bench cover it does make a mess. l8tr Bob Bradlee On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:31:31 -0600, compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: blowtorches?