When I pulled my Westinghouse apart I used a 100/150w Weller gun. The pencil tip irons just aren't good enough for joints this big. With the gun on the joint I used the pliers to flex the wire which is usually wound around the terminal just so I could hopefully find the other end of the lead sticking out of the mass of solder, then I used the pliers to unwind and pull the lead off the terminal while the iron kept the joint hot. If you have a desoldering tool it makes things way easier as you can just remove all the solder from the terminal and usually the component can be pulled out.
I also had to remove some components to reach more deeply wired components. You CAN clip the old parts out and solder the new components in but it can look rather ugly.
Just to be warned, you will find that a number of resistors will of drifted away from their indicated values. It's advisable to at the least confirm the values of the higher wattage resistors.
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I don't know how they kept stuff from shorting out.
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Very carefully.
Attaching a VCR or anything that can output to channel 3/4 will work. That includes a Playstation 3 with the RF adapter.
Also, even after a full recap I'd be weary of just plugging it in. An immediate inrush of electricity at full power after years of no use can cause a number of things to happen, most of which potentially bad. If you can find someone with a variac or if you're really desperate, a dimmer switch, you gradually bring the voltage up over time, observing things like current draw, if the heaters in all the tubes are lighting up (that will include the CRT), or if components are simply not going to wake up and burn out immediately.