Head on over to the main branch of the Burnaby Library near Metrotown. They have a whole bunch of great books for the budding machinist. In it they show the ins and outs of grinding your own lathe tooling and setting the angles along with a huge number of other things.
If you're working with some generic carbide toolbit set that uses small triangle inserts this could be the problem. First off it takes a heavy and solid machine to work well with the "plow" like manner that molded insert tooling uses. Many of them use a negative rake setup. And that just takes more power and a more solid machine to work well.
A far better option is to get some HSS tool blanks and learn to grind them correctly. Your cuts will smoothen up right from the beginning. And unlike the many varieties of carbide insert or brazed carbide tooling HSS works well for a wide variety of steels, brass, aluminium and plastics. And a fresh cutting edge is only a touch up on the grinder away. Save the carbide tools for when you're turning something that needs the extra hardness or that is abrasive.
There's literally dozens of things you can start out making for your lathe. And by doing this instead of buying them you will learn more than you can imagine. For example I made my own heavy boring bar setup and bar holder for my lathe. The bars are 1/2, 3/4 and 1 inch and the holder is made from a hunk of 2 inch square steel. Holes for the bars were directly drilled into the block of 2x2 after facing off the ends, chamfering the corners and drilling the center hole for the hold down bolt. The block was clamped down with the hold down bolt and the drill bit needed to run the holes was chucked up in morse taper adapters directly in the headstock.
You'll quickly learn that 90% of machining metal effectively is figuring out how to hold stuff and support it when cutting the metal so you don't have to force things. The rest is just going through the motions of turning the wheels and levering the levers.
Head on around to Thomas Skinner tools and invest in a couple of GOOD lathe files. No cutter will leave the surface with a "ground smooth" sort of finish. That's where a long angle lathe file comes in.
And just because you've given me the opportunity I'll haul out my tired old pictures of tooling that I've made for myself in the hope that it inspires you.....
The first is some morse tapered arbors and slittle saw holder that I have made. Getting the taper set up correctly so that it only required a slight tuning with the lathe file was the big deal here.
The second is a tool post I made up for use with my knurling tools. Again because these need to be centered I was able to hold the two flute milling cutter in my head stock chuck and mill the holder directly on the lathe without the need for my milling machine.
Third is a "flat vise" which I strongly suggest is a great project. It's just the thing for holding small things like washers that you want to drill out the hole and where holding the part in a regular sideways vise would most certainly buckle the metal. What you see is about 3x3. The wussy 1/8 thick clamping bar has since been replaced by a 1/4 thick new piece and works extremely well.
The next two are pictures of a die holder and pilot shaft that is a great help for theading stuff in the lathe in a way that is "good enough" for most things. It really helps for avoiding the need to single point cut threads that only need to be OK and not exactly perfect.
And finally this is about the easiest thing to make yet it's highly useful. A dial guage holder that fits into the spot usually used for a cutting tool and that holds the dial guage with the sensor foot at the same height as a cutting edge. Very handy for zeroing stuff in the four jaw instead of using a magnetic base.
