I bought a mini-lathe (Sieg C3) about a year ago, my lack of training and experience in machining makes me the limitation, not the lathe!

What I have found is that the tailstock needs a lot of attention to get it centred and aligned, and then constantly checked and adjusted to keep it there, otherwise centre drilling etc is a wasted effort. As delivered, the tailstock is miles off. It comes with one grub screw at the back, and a bolt from underneath, to hold it to its mounting plate. I drilled and tapped two holes from the front and put in bolts so that now 3 bolts hold its alignment, and by adjusting them I can fix the direction it is pointing horizontally. Having the main fixing bolt underneath is no use, you can't get at it to lock it in place without taking the tailstock off the bed thus ruining the alignment so I drilled its hole right through to the top, put in a longer bolt from the top and used a square nut in what had been the bolt head channel in the base, so now I can tighten it from the top without taking the tailstock.off the bed. I had to shim up the stock on its base to get the height and angle right, I found spark plug feeler gauges were perfect for that.

The main chuck is also a very handy vice for round things that need cutting with saws, like wing joiner pipes, piano wire etc.