You can get SMD practice boards with some parts on eBay or AliExpress. Before I did my first SMD soldering on actual projects I assembled a bunch of those. You can also make your own practice PCBs with the footprints you want.
Uh, no. Dunton Nokorode has been a standard plumbers flux in the US for over a century. It is very much like what suzyj was mixing-up above, with petrolatum/Vaseline, except instead of rosin it has zinc chloride. It is less corrosive than acid-based fluxes, but it is "no corrode" only on PIPES and heavy wires, NOT for fine-wire electronics (and certainly not SMD).
The package didn't change for about 55 years, and then they added the zip-code to the postal address. (A lot of eBay sellers don't notice this.)
Nokorode had a book of tips: Nokorode soldering kinks 1917
Why it it in my bathroom? It's just a copy of the lid, set into a drawer-pull. Somebody thought it was decorative. But today I happened to be working next to that drawer and it caught my attention.
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This is what I use. The liquid flux is made by dissolving rosin in IPA. The paste in the plastic container is what it's used for soldering pipes, but I heard that it's corrosive and can destroy PCBs, so I only use it for wires. The seringe paste is made using Suzy's method.
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Plumbing flux will attack wires too, the copper and the insulation... Not for electrical use at all.
https://askinglot.com/will-plumbing-flux-work-on-electronics
https://askinglot.com/will-plumbing-flux-work-on-electronics
So I have always heard. Not seen it, but not done it much. The NoKorrode booklet mentions "wires" several times, but IRON wire in large gauge was still the standard for overhead telephone lines.
