Soldering (moving on from hotswap sockets)

Back in November, I started modifying keyboards by swapping in different switches, in hotswap boards. Great as far as it goes, but limiting. Decided to get back into soldering (used to do it a lot when I was a kid, with a Radio Shack iron and no training).

Have a cheap ($19) numeric keypad that came with awful mushy "MX Blue clone" switches (I think they're Outemus but my middle age eyes can’t read the branding). Decided to make it my sacrificial lamb for practicing desoldering and soldering, with decent equipment and supplies this time:

Hakka FX888D-23BY soldering station
Engineer SS-02 solder sucker
Kester 44 Solder Wire, 63/37 0.031-in
Silicon repair mat, to protect my work surface (cough the kitchen table cough)
Hakko CHP-170 Micro Cutter
Solder wick (I need to work on my technique; video tutorials suggest this should be easier than using the desoldering pump, but my experience has been exactly the opposite)
A beefier keyswitch puller than the chintzy metal ones that came with various keyboards
Some 24 gauge wire
Some basic tools for prying apart keyboards etc.

Heated the soldering iron up to 662°F (350°C, the maximum for the silicon tip of the Engineer SS-02) and got to work, pulling out the blue switches and swapping in some spare switches I had (a Jade, a Pale Blue, a Navy, and a bunch of White Kailh Box switches) and ... Much better! And everything works. And I’m mostly not embarrassed by my solder joints.

RIP my wallet. I may be swapping Navy switches into my dasKeyboard (Mac layout)...

I found a few YouTube videos to be crucial as I (re)learned this stuff: