The poor man's solder reflow oven [Hands On]

Last time I tried soldering small resistors was an experience, I'll tell you what. They were almost as likely to stick to my soldering iron as they were to stick to the board, and I burned plenty of them in half. Admittedly, I don't have the world's best soldering station. In fact, what I have is a junky old pencil iron, not much better than what you'd buy at RadioShack- no adjustable temperature control and no replaceable tips. I also don't have US $500 to invest in upgrading my station, but even if I did, it wouldn't help much. I'm getting older-and so are my eyes. The solution was obvious: Build a reflow oven!