Someone committed suicide in the last building I lived in, the entire place burned down, I lost all of my furniture. But at least I can solder.

Nature's desk.

Been there. Stull struggling with desk space sometimes, but at least I have a silicone mat now.

"Why don't you use your project desk?"

You mean the place where I store project materials before they are brought to the smaller floor workspace? Nah...

I have the 14 items that I need to do a basic soldering job scattered all throughout my apartment. Even though I do 100% of the soldering in one small area, I feel the need to distribute these pieces throughout my place, so I must go on a wild adventure every time. I will also make sure to misplace random critical objects while I am in the middle of a job.

Which of these two, perfectly normal soldering tools do you deem to be the heaviest you've seen in your life?

Really? Seems like a fairly normal iron. I have two of a similar size and another smaller one. I watched someone on youtoob doing copper gutters on a chateau and he had a very large propane fueled soldering iron. That one was ungainly.

Planes will eat up all that heat and spread it out.
Always takes a lot of cooking to get solder to flow on a direct ground plane connection.
Often why a pad will only be connected by a few small&short traces to the actual net plane around it: let's the pad heat properly to let the solder flow.