This thread got very busy as the day went by.
@werowance Yes, it does help. I think people who tend to say, "meh ... close enough" all the time don't take on machining as hobby, and I can see I might be over analyzing this condition.
The micrometer is new and seems decent. The anvils are good; never been dropped and everything seems to do what it's supposed to. It's midway in price between Shars and Mitutoyo. I had a Shars that died at its first battery change. About a year old? Certainly less than two years old.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B075K2DJPB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The telescopic gauge is marked as Starrett and came in a box marked Starrett, bought used from eBay. I have a set that's not as good quality, but when this size broke, (3/4" to 1" - I think) I picked up this Starrett.
The Gage R&R studies I've been involved with were all electronics testing and I wouldn't know what to do here.
This would be a good place to post this picture:
View attachment 132045
The Telescopic gauge we're talking about. Note how the shaft is a few degrees above perpendicular to the head. That's the only thing I know that isn't as good as I'd like to see it.
My technique is to lay this on the side of the cylinder so that the head is on top of the last circular flange, then grab the knurled part of the handle with a pair of long needle-nosed pliers (it's just left of the non-knurled part on the end). Then I put it in place in the cylinder still holding it in the pliers, with the pliers flush with the end of the cylinder, and unscrew the clamp holding the movable pin in place. Jiggle it a bit and then tighten down the screw to hold the position - all the while trying to preserve that angle so that the measuring head is perpendicular to the walls of the cylinder.
I might have a pair of calipers like that around here. Sounds odd, but I know I've had them before. The other trick, the dial indicator with a pointed scriber is interesting, but I don't think I have anything like that pointed scriber.
My lathe is a SIEG SC4, from Little Machine Shop, their LMS3540. These are 8.5 by 20" so not quite a 9x20 lathe. The spindle motor is 1.3 HP (1000 Watts). I've been taking .020 radius off per pass (.040 diameter), running 300 RPMs. The lathe has power feed, which is coupled to the turning RPMs. It feeds at about .002" per revolution.
What I've been doing is similar to what you describe, not not exactly. I power feed until the boring bar is just about as far as it will go into the cylinder, remove power feed and advance the tool the last .025 to .050. Then instead of reversing the motor and reversing the power feed, I manually turn the handwheel on the cross slide until the the cutter comes back out of the cylinder. Going forward, it takes about 5-1/2 minutes to cut an entire pass. I've never timed myself doing this, but I think it's more like one to two minutes to take that spring pass taking the boring bar back out.