I am looking for opinions on the best types - my lathe came with traditional cast, shaped rests that reach out to the piece with a shaped 'blade'. These work fine at first but seem to be made of fairly soft metal and thus to acquire a 'ripple' on the resting surface from intermittent tool pressure, for example when rounding or turning complex shapes. This can make it tricky to move the tool smoothly along the rest. I have ground the rest surface level again and know friends who have done the same, but this does not look like a sustainable solution. But I also have seen and now acquired a round steel bar type tool rest that looks to be made of much harder metal and is reported not to have this problem, though it does result in the tool support point being necessarily a bit further from the piece being worked.
What is other people's experience here?