Thanks all.
Well today went relatively well...no doubt due to the loads of good advice I got.
Here's my report
I starting drilling with a 1/4" and went up by 1/16 from there until I got to about 29/64. (Yeah..I know that math doesn't work out.)
Most of the time it went great. Two observations...
1) Each time I drilled I could tell the brass was trying to pull the drill bit out of the tail stock. It helped if I fed a little faster but I didn't like doing that. That kind of tells me that the idea of having brass only bits may be a good idea.
2) At one point, with a larger drill bit, the system stalled. I was running about 300 RPM with a drill bit about 7/16 or slightly less. I think the speed was too low or my system can't provide the torque at that setting.
I finally got to a large enough diameter that my boring bar would fit. That went pretty well.
I bored until I was within about 1/64 then I reamed.
1st Pic shows the boring.
2nd Pic shows the reaming.
3rd Pic shows the outline I'm going for with a 0.500 bearing shaft in the bore. A little tight which I think is good at this point.
One last observation...which bothers me a bit...
I had squared the stock on the mill then went to the lathe. One would think (or I had thought) that if the stock was perfectly square then a facing operation of 1 thou would take 1 thou off the entire face. Not so. It took about 5 or 6 thou before the entire thing was faced. It was slightly worse when I flipped the part and face the other end.
I had squared the stock using a 3/4" end mill and was pleased to see the expected pattern of a trammed machine...in the X direction.
But I believe, the Y is off. By some significant amount given the size of the part is at most 1.375".
However, I'll be interested in anyone's thoughts on similar findings.
To me this means the bore is not square with the bottom of the part. I think this can be corrected when I put in the holes, ports, and shape the cylinder. Even if this takes a bit off the bottom, the pedestal can be raised to account for it.
If you can't tell...I'm somewhat chuffed (as they say).
One thing that bothers me...When I look at the end where the reaming started...it looks pretty decent. But at the other end I see a little grooving as if the boring bar was wider there and the reamer did nothing.
Foo. Maybe not so chuffed. Makes me think the tail stock is not in line.
Oh well. At this point (posting my results) I've been celebrating and I'll worry about that tomorrow.
Progress is progress and this was progress.
(Despite the fact that youngest daughter came over and she and wife insisted I join them in the pool. Slowed me down.)
I feel good and that's what matters.