I agree totally with your observations and am always trying not to shoot myself in my future foot. It's been a big change for me to move to a mostly tourist area. There is small industry but not a lot of heavy manufacturing. So metal supply, especially small pieces are hard to find. I'm still trying to make connections as there are few welding shops, even fewer machine shops. Everything starts at 5' long at the closest dealer so I would had to spend over $150 and then would have to sit on the rest of it.

I don't have a hydraulic press or do any punch work. I have a 3tn arbor press that so far does what little press work I need. But I do have a project in mind for this chunk. A mod of the current Tony Faole ball turner. The trick is to anneal it so I can work it. I have a small set of tanks so I don't think the rosebud would work, and I don't have a forge. But maybe it's time to rig something with charcoal, a brake drum and a blower?

I have an easy time acquiring, but a hard time selling. So I've not had that problem yet of selling something then regretting it. So that makes me more likely to repurpose like with that drill head you mentioned. As the industry that is here is gutted and the old guys retire stuff comes up and it's sometimes amazing. I'm very limited in my space which is by design as I would have dragged home somehow some behemoths. The old industrial size machines are sometimes achingly cheap. Like an old Index vert mill and a huge old American horizontal mill for $450 ea. Luckily I couldn't even move them, much less get them in my garage My brother sold his Hitachi mill for $1,000(direct knockoff of a Cincinnatti) because nobody except this outfit could move a 8,000lb mill.

Hobby size stuff is another matter. If it will fit in a garage and says Atlas or South Bend then you could swear it's made out of gold. I got my '90 Chinese lathe and '87 Tiawan mill/drill for $1000 total with some tooling and both suffering from multiple hobbyist owner ignorance induced problems. So it's been a two way street as my need of more precision goes up I fix and mod the old machines and we both are the better for it.