Here is a response from a novice.
Besides the tremendous help I got from Butch, I printed and put that compilation in a binder and read it I don't remember how many times, I even took it with everywhere I went and read it any chance I had; in flight, at the airport, break time from the grandkids, at the hotel after shooting in matches, etc. It was overwhelming at first, I am kind of slow, but what was written in the whole binder made more sense later the more I read it. I tried the different approaches others wrote about, turned a bunch of shot out barrels into buckets of chips. Lots of good information, but after testing other procedures, I found out my lathe, my cutters, and my set up are not the same as anyone else's, I better learn how to use what I have to achieve the same results. I suppose I was not afraid to try and fail and just dove right into it, and learned a lot, and still learning. Now, even after cranking over a couple of dozen barrels I still consider my skills to be in the crawl phase compared to the gentlemen on this forum.
I don't know what machining background you have, I started from nothing, l had to learn the very basics of running a lathe and a mill. I spent many hours sometimes almost all night trying different things. Ignorance is bliss.
It is a journey, enjoy the ride.
