Mini lathe - my first attempt turning plastic - useless!

[HankMcSpank]

Hi there,

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks...it seems I didn't have swine flu a few weeks ago, but pneumonia resulting in a secondary complication - a lung abcess, so I've been in a North London hospital 'main lining' penecilin for 14 nights.

Anyway, after a fortnight listening to strangers coughing their guts all night every night, thankfully it seems the abcess is starting to shrink so they finally released me today.

In my opinion, their suggested bed rest is for complete wusses...nope, methinks "let's use this time wisely & start making stuff!" (the hospital have signed me off for two weeks :naughty:)

Ok, the story so far...I thought I didn't need a lathe, but then I realised I did, but I'm too tight to just go out & buy one, so I bought a non working lathe, then spent a week or so fixing it - it now works. That said, it doesn't have a chuck - I'm waiting on stock arriving from the far east...in the meantime I've bought an MT3 to MT2 Morse taper adapter which allows me to mount a MT2 drill chuck where the main chuck should be.

My goal today was simply to make a small V pulley wheel out of an existing small toothed plastic cog wheel (about 1.5cm Diameter, by 1cm in width).

So I mounts a cutting tool into the tool post & thought that my lathe would munch into the plastic easily...not a chance!

Now I don't know if it's my lack of experience, the wrong tool or perhaps aligned incorrectly (kip kindly gave me a load of cutting tools ...so I chose the one that looked like it would best recess a groove into the plastic), or maybe the fact that I'm using a drill chuck instead of a proper chuck (the plastic part I'm trying to turn keeps working loose of of the drill chuck jaws) or if my lathe is just woefully underpowered (it's an Axminster Sieg C2 with a 250W motor) ...the end result was that the tool barely scratched the suface...& this is plastic FFS!! (what hope do I have for shiny hard metallic stuff?!)

So I throw my plight open to the good forum - as a complete lathe noob, where am I likely going wrong?

I thought making these simple pulley wheels out of plastic would be an excellent 'intro' into using a lathe (& a doddle), but such was the frustration today that I'm now thinking lathes suck & pondering Ebaying it already!