Anyone else go in for 'just one quick heat' and look up at 1am?

My wife gave up telling me to come to bed years ago. Now she just leaves a plate covered in foil on the counter and I find it around one in the morning when I finally quit. Last Tuesday I went out to rehandle a tomahawk I'd been putting off for months, and next thing I know it's two and I've also drawn out a drift I didn't need and normalized a batch of leaf springs a buddy dropped off in the spring. Time just goes strange out there after ten or so.

I think part of it for me is that the phone stops ringing and nobody needs anything. During the day I'm half working, half keeping an ear out for the house. At night it's just me, the coal, and whatever's on the anvil. Some of my better pieces came out of sessions like that. I made a set of fireplace tools for my sister entirely between midnight and four one winter, and she still uses them every day.

The one habit I'd push back on is the neighbors can't see you bit. My shop shares a wall with the bedroom of the house next door, so I switched to quieter work after eleven. Drawing out stock with a heavy hammer at midnight got me a note in my mailbox once, and I deserved it. Now anything loud happens before then and I do filing and fitting later.

I used to be the midnight shop rat too, but I flipped it a few years back and never looked back. These days I'm out there at 5:30 with the coffee, before the family stirs. There's something about a cold anvil at dawn that does the same thing for me the late nights used to, except my accuracy is way better. I can't tell you how many scroll ends I had to cut off and redo at midnight because my eye went soft after ten.

The real turning point was when I burned through a pair of tongs I'd bought used from an old farrier, overheated the boss and didn't notice till the steel had gone bright in the wrong spot. That mistake was pure fatigue. Mornings I catch those things.

Also, the neighbors thing cuts the other way for me. My shop shares a wall with the bedroom, and a hammer at 9 PM might as well be a jackhammer through the drywall. At dawn everyone's either asleep through the white noise or half awake anyway.

That said, I still get the pull. Friday nights after a long week there's nothing like firing up the coal pot and losing a few hours. I just keep the Friday projects simple now. Hooks, yes. Anything with a deadline, no.

The twenty minute estimate is the part that gets me, becasue I've actually started logging my sessions to test it and the shortest real session I've had in two years, startup to shutdown to wire brush, was about two hours. The lie isn't even about the forging itself, it's that you conveniently forget the fire needs a good twenty minutes before it'll do anything useful, and then cleanup eats another half hour you never budgeted for. My working theory on the late night quality thing is that it's survivorship bias, honestly. The sessions that went badly at one in the morning end with everythign dumped back in the scrap bucket and you don't count those ones.

For me it's the 'one more heat' trap. I'll finish a piece, tell myself I'm done, then notice the fire's still good and there's that other scrap piece sitting there. Next thing I know it's way past when I meant to quit and I've got three coat hooks nobody asked for. The dog stopped waiting at the door years ago by the way, he's got a bed out there now and judges me from it. Only downside is the next morning at work is rough. Anybody else find thier handwriting looks like cave paintings after a late forge night?