Ron, the inserts that appear blunt work by generating a lot of heat, and plasticise the material. This plasterised material then shears off the stock, with the majority of the heat going into the chip itself. For this to work, it needs surface speed, and rigidity , and a reasonable depth of cut, anywhere from 50% of the tool radius and higher, or the nose radius of the tool in diameter as a minimum cutting depth/pass. Also the edge of the insert has clearance of around 5deg to 7 deg from the radius edge looking sideways.
Your brazed blanks came most likely with 0 to very little side relief angle on them. If you try and grind them on a green wheel, under a microscope there will be micro cracking of the edge and top surface. This micro cracking does not lend itself to very good cutting and shear and surface finish. If you diamond lap the edges, by hand very slow, but a diamond lap wheel is quite fast, the surface is very good and so becomes the surface finish.
For a lot of home / hobby lathes, the Aluminium grade carbides work really well on steel as a finishing tool and can take quite small cuts. The Al inserts do not do well when facing to the very centre, so where possible, put a dimple on the very centre to eliminate that part.
I have given up on negative inserts with my myford and now use ground positive geometry inserts , like the wonder inserts etc