I should add that I started out reading a lot of books at the library, reading through Mr Hall's website in great detail etc., but I learned the most by putting the books down and just doing it; of course, the books were kept handy for figuring out what I did wrong when I broke something - and I did that A LOT. Safety glasses mandatory; my wife even threatened to buy me a T-shirt she spotted in a shop, that said 'Requires Adult Supervision'. Several burned-out tungsten-carbide-tip lathe tools was how I learned the importance of packing the cutting edge up to exactly the same height as the centreline of the lathe chuck ;-) It's not the carbide itself that fails, by the way, but the lower-melting-point brazing metal that is used to stick the carbide to its steel arm. As frustrating as it was to be wrecking tools, it nevertheless taught me about the importance of cutting-tip geometry, and I eventually graduated to grinding my own tungsten-carbide end-grooving tools, because one small enough for my pipsqueak of a lathe cannot be had for love nor money.
My first attempts at machining cast brass wheel centres to fit commercially-manufactured tyres started with cutting a blank disc to test how precise I could be - I couldn't afford to ruin any castings because the supplier was a grumpy old sod and I nearly had to promise him my first-born in order to get the castings! Only once I was sure I could hit the mark reliably did I dare cutting the castings. It will always be a case of incremental improvement, gradually extending abilities and making or purchasing tools to make jobs easier. I will also happily admit to finding that some things are completely beyond my skills or the capacity of my machinery - or the amount of time I have available. I'm quite proud of the steam loco driving wheels I fabricated, but I have since realised that I would die of old age before I completed a fraction of what I want to do. I don't have any great desire to be able to say I made all my own wheels; I would much rather be building freight cars, so now I buy the superb driving wheels made by Slaters in the UK whenever I can find a match within an inch or so of the prototype size - self-quartering, screw assembly and they even include crankpins....worth every penny!
