Cutting ISO threads (by trial and error, mostly error)

 I recently got a 8" Bison 6-jaw Set Tru scroll chuck for about $100. These are forged steel, made in Poland, and are generally around $2000 for a new one. I figured this one would be worn out, since there are more moving parts in a scroll chuck than an independent jaw chuck. The internal ring gear is pretty well sealed, so it doesn't usually wear out if kept greased, but the centrifugal forces of the spinning chuck sling the grease out and pack it into places where no mechanical engagement happens, and over time the grease hardens and doesn't do much good. The ring gear can wear if the grease isn't replaced, from contamination or just from age. There's not much wear on this ring gear or the turning gears at all. They still have the original machining marks, just a little polishing on top of that.

The Bison scroll chuck (taken apart for cleaning and lube). I didn't show the Set Tru screws :( or the shoulder where the chuck registers. So this is just the chuck, in pieces.

The 8" backing plate blank. Cut from 1 1/8" 1018 round, ~2" length.

Boring/threading 1 3/4 x 8 TPI thread. Shop made boring bar from a 1" 1018 bar with HSS bit ground to 60°. You can just see a few threads about 1" in from the face. The back plate is drilled from the back and bolted to a slotted face plate that's trued to the spindle. 

I don't have ANY kind of thread gauge, or a snap gauge, or any way to measure bores deeper than 1/2". I'm cutting this to 1.80 on the outer bore. An ISO thread should have all of the dimensions below included:

So one way to cut threads (single pointing) is to grind the tool to ~60°, and set the compound angle 29.5°, which is .5 less than half. A hair less than half is basically the idea here, because when you move the tool into the thread by a few thousandths per cut, only the leading edge of the tool has to cut, and the trailing edge is not 'dragging' because of the added clearance angle.  The dragging side of the tool would create heat and ruin the tool and maybe the part. Plus, the tool will try to get ahead of the lead screw (where there is backlash), and tend to make the pitch longer as the thread advances.  

 This is how threading is taught in schools, where the lathe is an old South Bend 9" with a not very stiff lantern tool post. If you plunge cut both sides of a thread in that setup, straight in with no compound angle, you'll get a lot of howling from the tool, broken tools and not very good threads. Especially if you're threading from the end of a boring bar.

Another way to single point a thread is to use a half tool without the back cutting edge and feeding with the compound at 30º.  Any flex in the tool or cross slide will probably make the left face of the thread rough, but the 1/2 degree is taken out of the equation. This thread would require more cleanup.

Regardless of how the tool is ground, there's the question of how much the total compound feed needs to be to complete the thread. The rule of thumb equation is .708/threads per inch. So in this instance .708/8tpi = 0.0885". So your compound needs to feed forward from zero to 0.0885 in increments of a few thousandths per cut. That's one method.

The no calculation involved method, is called the zero-to-zero method.
Touch the tool to the major diameter, set the compound and cross slide to zero. Back out the cross feed enough to clear the part, move the cross slide out free of the part, reset cross slide to zero, and advance the compound until the desired depth of cut is measured. A dial test indicator on the compound touching the major diameter will measure the desired depth. Reset the compound's dial to zero.
Starting your cut from the major dia., advance until the compound reaches zero.

At the end of either method, a really light spring cut is taken using the cross slide feeding into the cut straight to clean up both sides of any marks from wobbly gibs or tool flex. A file is run over the tops of the threads to remove any burs.

I didn't mention anything about change gears, gear box or threading operations besides the angles involved here. Gearing is specific to the lathe, and threading operation is best shown by demonstration.