Why can’t I find cheap TQFP 44 sockets

Unless you're soldering with a blow torch I highly doubt you will damage a SO-28 as long as you have some soldering experience. Just tag 2 corners, use plenty of no-clean flux both on the board before you place and on the rest of the pins after you tag and you really can't go wrong.

The TQFP is pretty much the same process. Don't try to solder a pin at a time. Tag opposing corners (takes a bit more care to get all the pins lined up). Apply plenty of flux, again to the board before you place and then to the pins after its tagged and soldering the sides only takes a couple seconds.

In both cases don't try to be cheeky and solder 1 pin at a time, if you've fluxed properly you can use a chisel tip the size of the entire side of the IC and solder without bridging while only heating the IC for a few seconds, although i'd recommend starting with a smaller chisel. The only special thing you need is thin solder to avoid getting way too much on there, 0.4mm is what i use.

I really doubt you'll kill many, if any, ICs learning unless you try to solder with no flux and go 1 pin at a time.

You'll save way more IC's by using decent soldering equipment than anything else.

Actually, it does work to a degree. However, with multi-lead components you may need to get more of the solder off than the wick can pull - contacts perfectly seated on the PCB may have solder retention "pull" the rivals that of the wick. Even a small chip resistor or capacitor can be difficult to non-destructively remove while heating with a single tip iron (and while destructively digging it off often works, you risk damaging the board).

Some options:

• A hot air station is one of the best tools, cheap ones go for around $100 now.

• There are also dual-tip tweezer irons for removing chip resistors/capacitors. These cause less damage to surrounding components/housings than hot air may, so if you do a lot of analog prototyping where you are changing components values they can be worth the $50-60.

• for a chip resistor/capacitor, you can try to add enough solder to bridge the component and thus heat both sides at the same time

• sliding a fine wire under SMT IC leads can help you lift them one at a time - music wire from a hobby shop specializing in gram-class aircraft is ideal

• low temperature solder is sold which alloys with the existing solder to lower its melting point, however the possible alloying elements are either extremely expensive or substantially more toxic than lead.

Even with many of the other methods for removal, you may end up reaching for the wick to clean up the pads before installing a replacement.