Love anything home made Cobbadog. Even steel wheels. It's too easy to just buy stuff. Or chuck out broken items and buy new. Years ago you could at least have ago at repairing stuff and often due to lack of funds you had to do your own repairs anyway.
Currently I am building a milling machine and a lathe. Yes I can buy cheap second hand ones although SWMBO would balk at me doing so. There are two reasons to build.
1. It is a great challenge,
2. The money that is spent is spread over a period of time.
Mostly I am using scrap items from mates scrap bins. Parts off an old heavy industrial drill, gears from a car and a large old photo copier. Heavy steel from a mates major high rise project, and so on.
I have purchased the x- y table, a mill vice, the electric motors, lathe chuck, and a secondhand lathe head that was cheaper than the bearings and shaft if I made new one . I have spent many hours planning and made a few errors along the way. Work is more than half finished on the mill. I have the bed and legs done on the lathe. I have also almost finished a 6 foot bender to make the swarf tray for the lathe. Just need an electric oil pump and hydraulic rams for that ,which I will buy, but all the rest was scrap steel. (I do have two second hand rams but they are different sizes and might not push evenly with out trying to balance them.)
Just wish I wasn't so old as I have a number of other homemade machine projects in mind and probably limited time left.