Charles, In my previous life, i.e. before I retired, I worked as a technician at the Sandia National Labs rocket sled track. One of my fellow employees was a journyman machinest and taught me a little about machining. However a lot of what I do was learned by trial and error over a life time of designing and building stuff. As far as machining goes I'm sure that there books that could give you a lot better information about machining than I can. From what I have seen you post here I think you have a very good level of skills yourself. The tools I use are as follows:
Lathe; Harbor Freight mini lathe
Mill; Micro Mark
Cutting tools and fixtures for the lathe and mill; Micromark and the LittleMachineShop.com
Drill press, 6 inch belt sander w/ 8 inch disc, 1 inch vertical belt sander, Dremel tool, band saw, scroll saw, two sizes of torches and various hand tools including numerous files, shears, screwdrivers and wrenches. I'm sure you already have a lot of these things and some of them are not really necessary like the vertical sander and scroll saw, but are just nice to use if you have them. Actually those two were puchased for my wife's craft business.
I'm trying to decide if I should continue this log here or on the Builder's Log site which I haven't been able to decipher. This new format has got me very frustrated. I am not very computer savy and only do this as a way to comunicate and get information. Now I have to learn the process all over again. I guess I'm just a grouchy Old Fart but often "new and improved" just means that I don't like it as well as the old. End of gripe.