He'd lost track of time. Par for the course in the workshop, honestly.
Several pages had been filled with notes, sketches, thoughts, ideas. Nothing in particular struck him but such was the fickle nature of working under a deadline. No pressure. When his rear started to go numb from sitting on the bench he decided it was time to get up and move about - stocked up bloodflow was never good for the creative process. He walked his workshop and put the project from his mind. Instead he spent some time tidying up.
His time in his workshop was erratic at best, especially when the entire family was home. Daytime was for the children and nighttime was for his wife. In his youth he'd never needed much sleep, but he found those hectic hours of the day caught up to him more often than not. Chasing four children about, issuing entertainment and education and playtime and love were remarkably exhausting. So when a few hours or days aligned for free time he much rather not be bothered with keeping things neat down here.
The benches and work tables were littered with tools, notes, tomes, scrolls, pieces and parts - was that a holocron over there? Thank goodness Gabe hadn't figured out how to hack the access panel to anything down here. Yet.
Tools were picked from each surface and returned to their hooks, drawers, and boxes. He collected spare materials and parts, scraps and litter, and divided them out into their own containers. The scrapbox was looking fairly full now, as remiss as he was to discard anything of potential use, perhaps it was time to empty it out. He dropped the remaining detritus of his workspace in and walked the box over to the incinerator chute. In grabbing handfuls and pushing them through the hatch, a glimmer of metal caught his eye. In the box a metal casing of ... well, he couldn't really remember, but for some reason he felt the need to spare it. The rest went in. He set the casing aside near his current project and went about picking up what items from his archive vault needed putting-away.
To the vault he went; down the hall, second door on the left.