it certainly doesn't hurt. You will get back the full value, but now in smaller pieces so that you can spread it out instead being forced to dump it all into one stat. its also not exactly hard to get a tool you don't want since you're likely just recycling your daily forge anyways unless it's an S tool

Nope! you need it be high to use the essence on in the first place (which I think might be lvl 5), but you won't lose anything for exp "overflow" so to speak. You will for certain get back the full 1200 exp value of the gold orb when you recycle a tool that it was used on, and you will get it back in the form of 15 purples.