Who's charging $1000 for a blank? Most every well established rodmaker that I know charges around $3-600 for a ferruled 2/2 blank.

As for not having machine-made/mass-production processes, I can think of a couple dozen rodmakers who are only using a planing form/block plane and somehow manage to produce a quality product. The problem with the workers isn't so much that they aren't owner/operators, but more that they don't have any understanding of how/why these products are being used.

I think you hit on the real sticking point: profit margin. When you figure in the cost of the materials and the labor involved (even WITH machine-made blanks), there isn't any real way to make a significant amount of profit on them. Not unless your goal is produce them as fast as possible with little or no care given to the quality of the end product.