deskthority

I love the way these boards look, and am trying to get at least one unit perfectly restored and functional. Upon removing the caps on the first one I acquired, I noticed the metal base plate that holds all of the switches was chipping paint and rusting. I have since obtained a second identical unit, and am about to try to proceed to Frankenstein one nice keyboard together.

My big problem is, while I have collected many boards over the years, I am new to working on / restoring them. Does anybody know what the best way to remove the metal plate from the assembly would be? So far the best I can come up with is de-soldering all of the switches and then removing them from the plate. I'm sure they never planned on anybody trying to do this manually switch by switch, so I just wanted to see if the community here has any other ideas. I plan on sand blasting and re-painting at least one of the plates from these units for the rebuild. If I do have to resort to manually de-soldering, any recommendations for tools and equipment would also be very helpful.

Please excuse the grime in the second pic, the first unit was a barn find and I gave up cleaning it once I discovered the insane amount of rust.