Lots of good advice here. I can only add a few things based on experience. Lots and lots of experience.
--Wash the area you'll be working on with water. Just pull the drums off and spray everything with water. the reason I say water is that first, it's inexpensive compared to commercial cleaners. Second, it keeps the dust down, especially if you don't go blasting water like you're trying to strip paint, better than commercial products.
--You can blow everything dry with air after you've hosed the brake assembly off. And yes, you can use a commercial brake cleaner at this point if you really need to. Or you can dry well enough with rags, especially if it's warm out.
--Never, ever use heat or any kind of penetrating oil, or lube around your brakes. The only exception is white grease or never-seize on the contact pads part of the backing plates. Some people prefer white grease, some people prefer never-seize; I've used both with about equal results. Some brake kits come with single-use packets of white grease. Remember: like Brillcreame, "a little dab'll do you."
--Replace in sets, only. Did I mention replace in sets only? I mean it. If you replace one brake cylinder, replace the other one on the other side. Ditto for the drums, brake lines, and other stuff related to the brakes. It's usually only majorly inconvenient not to be able to start the truck, or to go as fast as the laws of physics will allow, but it's nearly always bad to not be able to <fontcolor=red>stop</fontcolor> when you really need to.
--Speaking of not being able to stop, no matter how cool someone thinks it looks, or how cheap you can get copper lines, they do NOT belong on your truck, as one guy who brought his 54 Ford F-100 to me found out the hard way. Even the newest Dot 5 Brake Fluid, or whatever's out there can't be trusted not to corrode through copper. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and the front end damage wasn't too bad.
--Don't assume your drums aren't out-of-round, or not heat-checked, or undersized. Bad brakes are nothing to screw around with. Also, don't forget to check the backing plates. It's possible to smooth out the pads that the shoes make contact with, but only to a certain point. A 90-degree die grinder with a 3-inch, 180-grit roll-loc disc on it works fine. If the pads are too grooved out, either replace the backing plate, or have somebody weld it up and grind the pad back to original height. Not the first choice, but it'll work well enough for many miles.
Holler if you run into any problems.
