To give you some further idea about hard materials when I lathed the outer skin of the QCTP I found I had to use tipped tooling with very high speeds or it simply wouldn't cut.
I think I used about 2,500 rpm but it might have been 3,000.
1,000 just blunted the tips. Feed was fast, I'm guessing this moved the cutting edge away from the heat into cooler material faster. The hear generated was so high the swarf caught alight and turned to a burnt powdery dust.
But the finish was almost like a high finish chrome. Very nice, certainly needed no further finishing.
Some people will say don't do it, find a different material. But I enjoyed the learning experience and lived to tell the tale...

Last night I turned some 3" free cutting steel to make a replacement part for my ongoing pillar drill re-build. That was so easy peasy in comparison and I turned that at around 750rpm.
But there is no way I would cut that by hand. I was having trouble parting my piece last night so I got the hand saw out. I gave up very quickly and this was free cutting steel.
I struggled with parting on the lathe but got it done. Took a while though, prob more than the rest of the turning/drilling job. I really want one of those tipped parting tools John has shown us.
What I'm trying to say is, if my lathe struggles then you have little hope by hand....even with free cutting steel at 3"