Afternoon Guys,

Just made my first cuts on my rebuild South Bend 9c.  First off, thanks to all who have helped me along the way with eh clean-up and reassembly.

Can't seem to get a nice, smooth cut.  Chucked up a 7-inch long, 1-1/2 inch diameter piece of steel I had laying around in an attempt to do the two-collar alignment test.  I used a four-jaw chuck, and adjusted it to sub .001 runout near the chuck.  No support on the tail end.  I faced it off, then started reducing the diameter.

I've been running at 410 rpm

Depth of cut between 0.003 and 0.005

Feed rate of 0..0031

Using a HSS cutter that came with the lathe

You can see from the photo that the surface finish is for sh$t.  Looks almost like a reverse thread.

Any suggestions relative to machine setup adjustments, machine tuning, spindle speed, feed rate, depth of cut, cutter, etc. would be appreciated.  Also, if I can answer any questions, send them on over.  Tough to troubleshoot when you've never done it before.

Thanks a lot for whatever input you may be able to provide.

Greg