Good manual for hobby purposes, but you left out a few important notes I think. My apologies if the structure of my post isn't the best!

NEVER EVER MIX SOLDER ON BOARDS YOU'RE REPAIRING!!! It causes fragile solder joints that are very sensitive to thermal expansion, shock, vibration, and other effects. On boards with leaded solder only use leaded solder. On all consumer grade board since the early 2000s use lead-free solder! If you suspect speciality types (e.g. cadmium based) of solder do it in open air or don't bother with it for that matter, but these are only to be found in avionics, military, medical, and high-end test & measurement setups. Low temperature Tin - Bismuth solders are starting to show up more often since they're actually quite cheap, you can easily detect these by using a soldering iron on a low temperature and check if it starts melting around 165°C. SnBi solder in wire form is extremely hard to find, though a company called Qualitek sells it in large spools. Use a separate tip for SnBi work and label it, consider it a contamination for other solders.

Using scissors or wire cutters to remove components is quite often done, but indeed a bit risky if you're not used to doing it. Luckily there is a somewhat idiot proof method at this one. When removing large packages with pins at the side and you don't care about the component a Dremel is your friend! A good carbide cutting wheel and some careful movement allows you to cut the pins without excessive stress on the board. But be sure to clean it for metal particles afterwards! Obviously safety glasses and a mouth mask are recommended.

And hot air rework is often combined with an infrared hotplate on the 'good' (= expensive) systems. You heat up the board to about 100 - 120°C and then locally heat it up further to 250 - 280°C (or more) using the hot air. This helps prevent board wrapping due to excessive heating (which is desirable in many cases), though this does expose the component to excessive temperatures if done incorrectly! Additionally this reduces the failure rate when removing BGAs I found. (Not sure if this is a consistent trend.)

Highest component survival rate, for non-BGA/QFN/DFN style packages, on modern boards I found is using a soldering iron which is able to pump quite some heat into the board quickly (e.g. ERSA i-con stations at 380°C) and adding a lot of solder on all sides of the component, switch between the sides constantly and push the component to the side using the solder wire or a set of tweezers and just pick it up then. Afterwards you can clean the component using desoldering braid on a lower temperature. Afterwards clean up the board using desoldering braid and don't be afraid to flux the hell out of it, be moderate on the temperature to avoid delaminating the pads. Afterwards give the board a good rub with a defluxing agent and some isopropyl alcohol as final step to clean it up.

A final trick is you are really stuck with a big fat QFP you can't get rid of is to take thick copper wire (2.5mm² or thicker) and to bend it around the perimeter of the component, then bend a part of it up and stick it in your soldering iron (does void waranty though :( ) and let it heat up for a while.

In terms of soldering irons, don't buy cheap Chinese counterfeit ones if you solder often. Both Weller and ERSA are still somewhat affordable and make great tools. Especially ERSA (i-Con 1 or better, none of the nano or pico stuff) seems to be the better choice in recent years. Granted the LCD screens on their stations suck, but they're brilliant at everything else. If you happen to find yourself somewhat insane and with too much money there's always Hakko for you I suppose.