Little Trick for Desoldering Through Hole Components

Have you ever felt frustrated trying to desolder a component from a board, wishing you had one more hand?

This trick can help you with some of the components. Specifically through hole components that are mounted with a little clearance below them. By little clearance I mean at least enough room to put a paperclip wire through. And they also should not have their legs remarkably bent on the other side of the board - this method does not work if you need to use force for bending them back. This worked nice for transistors, vertically mounted resistors and diodes and some capacitors depending on their exact mounting position.

Step 1: How to and Video

(Link to the video in case the embed is not working: https://youtu.be/MF6TsMrVT5o )

You need: rubberband and paperclip or semi-hard wire.
Straighten the outer loop of the paperclip and make a smaller hook in the end. Put the rubberband through the smaller loop. Find some way to attach the rubberband's other end to your desk. Put the wire hook under the component you want to remove. Hold the board so that the rubberband exerts a little pulling force on the component. Heat the solder joints and the component will be pulled out as soon as it gets free. The component is very likely to go flying. So be prepared to search for it all over the place. But after a little practice you will learn to pull just reasonably strong not too much and lower the chances of long distance flights.