Removing SMD components; masking

I am preparing to remove a pair of smd clocks, and was going to flood them with solder and remove them. The potential issue is that there are some very small capacitors nearby that would be best left if possible.

Has anyone successfully used a masking scheme to prevent any solder from disturbing nearby parts?

Painters tape would even work, any residue removed using a mild solvent, or alcohol.
 
That would be the best solution if it were an IC, with tiny legs. However, this is a tcxo with the pads underneath, so it is soldered face-to-face, directly onto the pads on the circuit board.
Thanks though for the response.
I may give it a try later on some dead usb input boards...
 
Swamp with plenty of flux and heat the chip, evenly, with a hot air gun. Lift the chip off when soluble.
It is a bit like the poor man's BGA chip. Heat through the chip, (heat the board underside to around 120C) that will avoid stressing the board.
NOT too hot!!!!!
Baco foil (kitchen foil) with a hole cut in it stops direct heat to adjacent components.
 
You can remove solder as much as possible with unsolder wire.
Then heat the pins on one side with a soldering iron and lift one side of the IC off.

I've found is that if you add solder, rather than remove it, it will stay fluid longer, giving you more time to melt the other side, which is the idea behind chipquik after all.
I would be worried that if you lift one side of a chip that you might rip off the pads on the other side.
 
In the early days of SMD, circa 1983, for SMD replacement in Sony camcorders, I used to photograph the board before hand, ensuring if the heat got too much and components blew away, I stood a good chance of replacing them. Luckily I never needed to replace any.
I use Infra Red and a board base heater, temperature controlled and programmed to avoid stress to the board and losing surrounding components.
It was quite expensive but as it is my profession, it paid for itself over a six month period.
As I say, flux is the key.
 
Thanks, those tweezers are pretty slick, might have to see if they make any like that for my new soldering station.
The practicing went well just flooding the 5x7mm oscillator with some garbage radio shack solder that I wouldn’t use to connect anything with, has lots of flux inside. The mask that was made from some adhesive backed foil tape worked very well to keep the flood of solder off of any nearby components.

The removal portion of this job will likely go smoothly, but the adaptation of a 2 x 2.5mm clock to the board is requiring me to make an adapter board. So far it looks good having drilled some holes for tiny wire to go through and then bend in a way that it will stay put. Then the wire can be lightly tinned, and the tiny clock added before mounting the assembly onto my main board.

The 5 x 7mm breakout board was basically done when I decided to snip it away from the larger portion of board from which it was made, flying somewhere into a dark corner...

Maybe tomorrow.
 
further to the response above from @rmaudio:
I used an "SMD removal alloy" product called "Fast Chip" by SRA to remove a potentiometer with 6 through-hole pins.
It melts like solder, but stays liquid longer, allowing you to remove the SMD or multi-pin connection.
My soldering iron is nothing special: Weller model WE1010 85W base with Weller WEP 70 wand.
325C was hot enough.
I then used copper braid to "mop up" the excess, and a solder pulling pump to empty the holes.

Kind regards,
Drew