Hey, Ron, hang in there. I still get the dreaded "SSCHCHHKKKTTTT" sound myself, usually coupled with a dirty word or two (or four, if I was microns away from getting that perfect shape and finish).
I've noticed that some of them are more brittle than others as well, so maybe you just got some toughies.
For me, cutting, not scraping is the key, but sometimes it's hard even to get the darned things round without them going kablooie, so I often resort to the following to rough them down to at least round:
So far, it's worked like a charm, and it's really fast, but you gotta be careful, of course.
Now, the lathe purists are probably going to crucify me for posting that picture, you know, "learn by mistakes", "failure is the best teacher", "that's not turning", yadda yadda. Bottom line, I've saved more $3 blanks with that $14.99 Harbor Freight monstrosity than you can imagine! I'd rather commit a huge wood nerd faux pas than spend time trying to figure out how to glue a little mangled inlace pyramid-shaped nightmare back on a blank. (which never works, by the way...)
Once I get them down to round without blowing big hunks off, I'm in tall cotton from there with just my super-sharp 1" skew, cutting NOT scraping.
Hope this helps. [
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