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Gary:Much nicer, good job. You can tell how smooth the surface is by sanding it "smooth" either while turning on the lathe (carefully) or with emery cloth on a flat surface (i.e. figure 8s). The easier it is to smooth the closer it was when you started. Don't know if this is common but what I've found.Note that grinding carbide will take a special grinding wheel. I've always called then a green wheel and don't know the technical terms or grits. It's awfully hard to do better than a purchased tool. But give it a go, it'll be useful for special tools you can't buy.Again good job. It's hard to get a good finish on a small light machine.
While it's specifically about South Bend lathes, the details, recommended cutting tool angles etc work just as well today as they did upwards of 100 years ago and on lathes of any brand. I have a few different hard copy's, but there's a free PDF of South Bends book How To Run a Lathe (HTRAL) here. http://www.vintagemachinery.org/pubs/1617/3789.pdf
Take this as constructive criticism since that's how it's meant. Your pictures seem to indicate at least faint tool marks being left on your facing cuts. There's at least two items that may be creating those. Using the cross slides handcrank to face the part. Those handcranks are meant as a quicker way to make larger distance moves on the slide or possibly roughing cuts where surface finish is of less importance. For the best surface finish, try using both hands to rotate the handwheel. As one hand rotates to where it's getting uncomfortable, use the other hand to pick up the rotation to maintain the same constant infeed rate and swap back and forth between each hand.Secondly your cross feed slide may be a bit loose. If it is, then using that handcrank always adds unbalanced side to side forces on the crossslide causing it to shift slightly towards and away from the face of the workpiece leaving those tool mark grooves. Proper gib adjustments are difficult to explain. For more entry level people, I'd suggest using the George H. Thomas method. Remove the cross or top slides handwheel and feed screw, then move the slide in and out by hand as your adjusting those gib screws. What you want is the least amount of clearance between the gib face and the slides dovetail while still allowing a smooth end to end movement without any tight spots. What you don't want is to adjust the gib so it's too tight. That's highly detrimental and result in accelerated wear on the slides, feed screws and nuts. Plus it makes the slide movements much less sensitive and predictable. If that gib is adjusted even slightly too tight, the slide itself won't start to move until the feed screw pressure gets higher than the friction amounts are. Once that happens you'll always over or under shoot the amount your expecting the slide to move. Adjusting the gib without the feed screw in place allows a much better feel for just how tight or loose the slide really is. Once you've done it a few times in that way, you'll develop the correct feel for just how tight the gib adjustment screws should be and how smooth the slide should feel once they have been adjusted correctly. Once you have that, then the slides can be adjusted normally and without removing those feed screws. G.H. Thomas mentions in a few places in one of his books that most amateurs tend to have there slides adjusted too tight. From what I've seen in many YT videos, I think I'd agree with his opinion.
One way to do the outer edge of the recess is to run the lathe in reverse and then the tool can be setup just the same* as for the hub but cut on the rear of the lathe. Bonus with doing it that way is you can feed in the same amount with the cross slide so don't go too deep or not deep enough.The tool does need sufficient side clearance for this but should be ok at the diameter you are working at.PS hopefully it is a bench grinder you are waiting for not an angle grinder.
While your at it you may want to try practicing putting the hole in the wheel for the axle, you're going to want to do that while the wheel is still mounted on the chuck from the tread forming operation to keep things all concentric. And because you're going to want the hole to be nice and concentric and to an exact size, you'll need to drill undersize and bore it out to final dimension. More fun ahead but you're getting there. Mike
Wow! That is great! You have made significant improvements over the past few weeks. Great work! That's what I love about this hobby - always so much to learn! Can't wait to follow your build thread Kim