PatHenry

Obviously you should do what works best for you. On the trail or on the side of the road, you have to work with what you have, so a BFH may be your only option.

For the O.P. or anyone who has never replaced a u-joint before - I would recommend having a press on hand even if you don't use it. Since you can get one as a loaner tool free with deposit, there's no reason not to.

In my case I had a bad axle side u-joint on my front shaft - so I pulled the driveshaft and discovered that the double-cardan was noisy as well so I figured, whatever, I'll rebuild the whole thing.

The joints appeared to be original, so probably 20+ years of New England salt and around 300k miles on the joints.

I started soaking it in PBBlaster immediately (wirebrushing and de-clipping first, of course) and ordered parts. It was the front shaft and fall weather, so I just drove without it in the interim. After a couple weeks of soaking, I went to take the old joints out using a BFH and a bench vise.
Some of the old joints came out without a ton of difficulty, but a couple of the caps simply wouldn't budge.
After bending the handle on my Dad's bench vise (a 30+ year old craftsman), I grabbed a press from AZ and finally broke the stubborn caps free.

When re-installing, the u-joints out of the freezer and the press made it short work to install the new joints perfectly. I particularly liked being able to crank the new caps in smoothly with a rachet on the press. The bench vise was barely big enough to span the width required and involved several different receiving/pressing bits to fit, with the press there was no screwing around.
Were I to go back in time with what I know now, I'd have started with the press and saved a good deal of time and frustration.