Sweede.
Sounds like you are on the right path. Most important thing is to have some right size work and develop a feel to it - it will help a lot later on. You pretty much have an idea what size of work can be mounted and turned on it, what is the right speed and how sharp the HSS has to be.
Internet is a wonderful place for information and misinformation. E.G. a lot of schematic, angles and grinding instructions on HSS for hobby use, but often same opinion is recycled countless times without much evolution. Some things you must figure out yourself. Some years ago (after reading most popular books on the topic, trawling the internet and trying a lot of different materials, speeds etc) I thought I had it pretty much figured out....later on I realized that the general shape of tool (as illustrated on publications) is pretty correct, but scale is misleading. Angles matter only about at DOC, rest of the tool could look like a carrot and it really does not matter as long as the tool is stiff enough. Other realization was the direction you sharpen very tip...best to sharpen same direction your work revolves. E.G. tool meets the sharpening stone same direction that the piece you are turning. Obvious exception being rake angle. I use a diamond lap to finish area near nose radius.
Another thing is amount of cutting fluid...sometimes a straight cutting oil applied with brush is fine, sometimes not.
For me biggest obstacle is finding freecutting steel. Looks like minimum order is in least 600 kg of one single bar size. I have bought probably 100 kg of bar stock on junk yard and found ONE hex bar of old leaded steel, rest of it useless junk or very specialized steel that makes eyes to water if touch it HSS. Fine with inserts, but drilling is pretty hard and threading even harder. Hope things are easier on Sweden. If they are I'll fuel up my car and order a ferry ticket to scource some 200 kg of free cutting steel for my personal hobby use.
PekkaNF
