Now I know that for some folks parting off in the lathe is routine, but for some of us it's a real PITA.? Or can be.? I've tried using a nice HSS blade in a holder with lots of oil and freshly-ground tip and still got it pulling to one side, and now a 1-inch tall steel blade with carbide insert for the first time last night.? Yeah, I broke the insert.? And yes, it was a cheapo chinese insert.? As delivered, the holder body was not well made and the bottom of the slot for the tool was tapered, causing a tilt in the cutoff blade of about 3 degrees or so.? Imagine that from an ebay seller!? So I put it in the the vise and milled the slot more parallel, which corrected the vertical angle of the cutoff blade, mostly.? I tried to minimize stick-out but still got too much chatter.? Part isn't that far out from the 4-jaw, but a tailstock center might've helped on chatter.

This is on a piece of 1.5" steel rod I got left from a construction project, no idea what alloy.? Maybe I have the wrong speed going and need to crank it up for carbide cutting.? Heard people say many home lathes struggle to spin fast enough for carbide but that seems unlikely.? Haven't tested higher revs yet, wanted to get your thoughts.

I saw a youtube video this morning? where a guy made a little foot from a piece of CRS that he bolted through his tool holder that sits on the top of the cross slide to keep it from bending down which seems interesting, but not sure if I could do that or not on my lathe.??