Trying to cut tool steel with my emco compact 8 lathe

[joebiplane]

I am starting to fab steve bednior's (sp) ball cutter My 4" chuck wo't take the 3" round steel stock I aquired for the body of the ball cutter, so I bought a used 6" independant chuck but the key required is an Odd ball not metric, mind you but seems to be a tapered broach in the adj. screws. the chuck key shaft that I have needs to be narrower for an inch or so because the jaw interferes with the key as the jaw extends out of the chuck... :-\
Thats the set-up story... Now...... I put the chuck key into my lathe to turn the handle down to fix the problem BUT.......
usinga tool with carbide cutting tip it's all I can do to scratch the key handle ???
I assumed the key is tool steel and I expected it to be hard....But this steel is " INDESTRUCTABLE" is this normal ??? if so how do you cut tool steel if one needed to cut or drill a piece ( I may want to cut a collar from another old chuck to use on my Emco which uses a plain back chuck mounted to a face plate that mates to my spindle with three bolts.
Sorry for the long post :-[
thanks
joe

 

[Tony Wells]

I wouldn't expect a chuck wrench handle to be tool steel, as such. Very likely to be heat treated 4XXX series alloy. If carbide won't cut it, it will either have to be ground, or annealed then cut. Of course, annealing will result in a softer, weaker tool, which can be re-hardened if you have the facility.
It's also possible that the entire thing is case hardened. If you don't need to remove much, and precision is not required, then rough grinding may be the answer. I would try a low spindle speed with a small radius tool first, though.

 

[Tony Wells]

You also might verify that your cutting tool is on or ever so slightly below center. On harder materials, you can't really get away with running above center at all.