Hit 200 hand-forged hooks last month without noticing

I was organizing my shop a few weeks ago. Started counting all the utility hooks I'd made over the winter. Hit 200 and couldn't believe it. Those are just the small ones for hanging tools and pans. Each one took maybe 10 minutes at the anvil. Has anyone else lost track of a simple project like that?

4 comments

4 Comments

faithg261mo ago

Started counting the rivets on an old mailbox I was restoring and ended up finding a whole collection of vintage bottle caps wedged in the bottom seam. Got distracted sorting those out by year and brand, completely forgot about the mailbox for like two hours. Eventually I gave up counting and just glued the caps onto some picture frames instead. Now I have this weird frame set that nobody else gets but it cracks me up every time I see it. That's kind of how it goes with shop projects too - you start off trying to track something simple and next thing you know you're 200 hooks deep wondering where the winter went lol.

mason7982mo ago

Man, I used to think keeping track of every little shop project was pointless busywork. But seeing a pile of 200 hooks you didn't even realize you'd made really changes your mind on that. It's a solid reminder that those small, consistent efforts actually add up to something real.

abbyr962mo ago

It’s like how small daily habits eventually just become your whole routine.

roseb621mo ago

Did you end up keeping those frames out where you can see them every day? I had a similar thing happen with an old toolbox I was cleaning out - found a stash of mismatched buttons in the bottom drawer and spent a whole Sunday arranging them by color and size. Didn't get to the toolbox itself for weeks but now those buttons are glued onto a corkboard in my garage and it's my favorite thing to look at when I'm in there. Little distractions like that somehow become the best part of the project, don't they?