In addition to the technique described by Chris, K6DBG, I've found a few
simple household items make a useful holding fixture.
1. A piece of thin, relatively soft foam, perhaps 1/2" thick.
2. A few spring clothespins
3. A piece of backing material, such as part of a scrap PCB or a piece
of aluminum.
Insert the parts through the holes, and lay the foam on the component
side. Place the backing material on top of the foam, making the foam the
filling in the sandwich and the PCB and backing material the bread. Use
spring clothespins to hold the sandwich together. It's important that
you use a clamp arrangement that is not too strong or you will flex the
PCB. An old spring clothespin provides about the correct force in my
experience. A new clothespin is almost too strong.
Flip the PCB over and solder away. As long as you don't poke the
component leads too hard, they will stay in place nicely.
You can see a photograph of this approach at pages 6 & 7 of my Z90
Assembly Manual, on line at
http://www.cliftonlaboratories.com/Documents/Assembly%20Instructions.pdf.
For larger PCBs, I use a longer piece of aluminum backing plate and
larger foam. This approach works best if you start with the small,
close-to-the-board parts first, such as resistors and the taller parts
last. I usually half-a-dozen components at a time, solder and then
proceed to the next group.
The photographs I mentioned are of a 4915 KHz bandpass filter and using
the foam holder, assembly went very fast. I built three dozen of these
with an average assembly time of around 20 minutes each, a good part of
which time was associated with the toroid cores and connectors.
Jack K8ZOA
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