I wound up getting a shim 'kit' from BusyBee, and then getting a set of feeler gauges for fine tuning after seeing that the thinnest shim in the kit was 0.3mm, and I am, at least in the near term, working on things < 25mm in diameter (and for smaller stuff, it's more critical to be closer to center than for larger stuff).
Now I am on to actually using it. Jumped into the middle of the pool doing threads on a 3/8" rod of mild steel [sure I could use my set of taps, but I want to learn how to use the lathe].
So far:
-killed the tip of one bit by doing too much at one and/or not doing a short relief cut at the end of the thread [so the lathe doesn't just come to a stop at a random point at the end of the thread]
-forgot to figure out how deep for the threads to be correct [went out and got a set of measuring wires today]
-killed two chuck keys by stupidly leaving them in the 3-jaw head and then running the lathe...dumb dumb dumb
-eventually, I'll have to go through the wiring/whatever controller or relays or whatever is running the motor, as for some of the speed settings, the motor pulses really badly. The slower ones don't do it, but I like my tools to work properly.
-the tailstock on the lathe doesn't appear to support being offset from center [one way to do tapers], but there is a fairly substantial dohickey on the far side of the saddle that appears to be used for doing tapers instead
-my dad has, well had, a lot of tools and instruments for machining, ones that I played with/occasionally damaged growing up and never knew what they were for, and now I'm starting to find out.
I'll give it another shot with another 'E' carbide-tipped tool, but if I bust that tip, I'll give grinding a piece of HSS into the right shape on my grinder [which appears to have the right grinding wheels for doing it [green & gray] vs a regular grinding wheel].
