I don't have a lathe, and am not sure if I need one yet, and have never
used a wood lathe. 35 years ago, I did some work on a metal lathe in a
research lab. Here's the dumb question: Why wouldn't I use a metal
lathe for wood so I could produce identical cylindars, etc using the
screw feeds rather than try and "freehand" the parts and hope they are
the same size?

Thanks for any answers.

Rich.....