Hi again Sorveltaja, if I might ask a few questions, I might be able to help with your gear cutting. For my own, I had to make an arbor for the cutter, making one that fit my largest standard (full depth) R-8 collet for my mill, which was .750, and with a shoulder for the cutter to bear against, so it is out of inch barstock, with the hole of the cutter being seven eighths of an inch, it got turned straight to a rather snug fit for the cutter, with the end of the bar in the tail stock center, a full depth of the thread clearance groove leaving the shoulder for the cutter just ten or fifteen thousandths narrower than the cutter, and a standard seven eighths fourteen thread chased on the lathe, and a round nut bored to the diameter of the thread minus double depth of a sharp "v" thread, and the nut chased with a boring bar till the arbor was a nice snug fit. With a sharp cutter, you should be able to take a fairly deep first cut, and taking one too shallow sometimes ends up with uneven depths, as the cutter pushes the work instead of cutting it. If the cutter is not pushing out nice curly clean cut chips, stoning the face of each tooth should sharpen it if it is just a bit worn, and if it is sharp, it ought to take a good .030 cut without a problem on the first pass. I use a cigarette paper, bring the cutter down to pinch the paper between the cutter and the gear blank, and back off the cutter carefully until I can just barely pull out the paper without tearing, knowing I've got a dead on thousandth of an inch between the two when I'm done. A caliper across the two while the paper is in place, and divide by two, move the cutter down the half, and you've got your cutter on center. I've cut splines for a PTO (power take off) for my 1953 tractor using the lathe/shaper method, splines for gear boxes, keyways through gears and pulleys, and while it works, it is slow and tedious. If you can get the cutter working right, you will be much happier a man I believe. Gears, drive and driven, should both be out of semi-hard steel with good oiling, or if the driven are brass, the driver should be steel, and have as smooth a finish as possible, for minimum wear. Aluminum is perhaps the worst material for gears that have any real load on them, and particularly bad for gears with a variable load such as valve gearing. I don't know about where you're at, but here, I often use shafts taken from junk washing machines as they are stainless steel, but definitely good quality, because they don't get twisted up when the washer changes cycles, as they would if they were junk metal. They will cut cleanly with high speed steel. I hope this helps if even a little bit. mad jack