Hi Hank, sorry to here about the pneumonia and hope you get back up to full speed soon.

So you can't even cut plastic on your lathe! That sounds as if you are doing something seriously wrong.....

Can you give us some more info on what cutting tools you are using, speeds etc and I will see if I can help, photo's would be good.

The drill chuck may not be helping you either but for turning plastic I thought that it would be good enough. You did have it rotating the correct way didn't you???

Just had a quick look on youtube and found the video below, just to show you that it should be possible to machine steel on your machine (not sure how accurate though looking at the video!)

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejST2UNngQU"]YouTube - C2 lathe machining Steel[/ame]