Tim, you outsmarted me. I'll give that a try if it ever happens again. it'll save me a few hours of boring tool zeroing.
Dave, I use 5/16 Dia brass tubing with 1/16 wall thickness from ENCO. All I do is face the ends, cutting it to length. THere is no need to taper the tube. I did find it may give a nicer thread if you file a 30deg chamfer on the end of the tube, but it's not necessary. The modification I made to KVOMS program to start the thread 1 turn above the stock takes care of that. The only cleanup I do is to remove the burrs with a wire brush.
My tool has 10 flutes. It's just a standard 60 deg V tool. I started using it at 900 rpm, and moved it up to 1200. The swarf is just dust now. When the thread starts out the cutting depth is fairly deep, but the finish is nice, so I do it in 1 pass. If it becomes necessary I may modify the program to use 2 passes, but I want to get some history first.
I can understand that if you have not been a programmer in your past life the code can be quite intimidating. The learning curve on the environment is the most intimidating thing to me, as I have always been a hardware developer, not a (software) tool developer. I can tell you this is the simplest environment I've ever seen. If you need help I can work with you. If you want, I can email you some G code. Just email me your tool diameter.
maury