My apologies it appears that they don't sell them , i may have been mixed up with another store i buy parts for my mini lathe .
I had a look at some other stores , HF ,Mcmaster carr and shars i can't find one their either .
Try ebay or amazon they may have one on there .
The test bar is just a ground piece of steel bar with a morse taper on one end and a centre in the other .
Not to worry as you can do the same thing with a piece of drill rod ( silver steel ) , precision ground or cromax bar mounted in a four jaw chuck and you want something around 3/4 to an inch in diameter and about6 inches long .
Set it up so 5 inches are sticking out of the chuck then set it so it runs true near the chuck then check the other end hopefully it will be very close to what you have near the chuck - if not give the high spot a tap with a soft hammer usually that is all it will take to tweak it and if you can get the chuck end dead on and the other end within a a thou or two it will be good enough , i usually mark the high spot and indicate along that axis ( high spot mark facing me ) as i know it is high and just subtract it from my readings .
The idea is to mount a dial indicator up on the carriage so it is indicating the side of the test bar facing you then run the carriage back and forth along the bar noting the changes in the readings . Then indicate the top of the bar remembering to rotate the test bar so you are indicating the same side of the bar as you did for the first test ( high spot mark now on top ) . Once again a couple of thou isn't the end of the world .
Another way is the suck it and see test , a 3 inch length of 1 inch dia alloy or brass bar is mounted in the chuck and a length of 2 inches is turned with a sharp tool using a light cut , measure each end of the turned section and compare the measurements , hopefully they are within a thou of each other .
If the vee on the head sits down on the vee on the bed and you can't wobble or rock the head around you probably won't need to worry too much about this test , its only when the head is able to twist or rock because the vee is cut too deep and is not aligning the head to the bed or the head is only sitting on a couple of high spots and can rock around .It sounds complicated but in practise it isn't difficult to do and it can save a lot of head scratching later on trying to work out why the lathe won't turn parallel .
I had a look at some other stores , HF ,Mcmaster carr and shars i can't find one their either .
Try ebay or amazon they may have one on there .
The test bar is just a ground piece of steel bar with a morse taper on one end and a centre in the other .
Not to worry as you can do the same thing with a piece of drill rod ( silver steel ) , precision ground or cromax bar mounted in a four jaw chuck and you want something around 3/4 to an inch in diameter and about6 inches long .
Set it up so 5 inches are sticking out of the chuck then set it so it runs true near the chuck then check the other end hopefully it will be very close to what you have near the chuck - if not give the high spot a tap with a soft hammer usually that is all it will take to tweak it and if you can get the chuck end dead on and the other end within a a thou or two it will be good enough , i usually mark the high spot and indicate along that axis ( high spot mark facing me ) as i know it is high and just subtract it from my readings .
The idea is to mount a dial indicator up on the carriage so it is indicating the side of the test bar facing you then run the carriage back and forth along the bar noting the changes in the readings . Then indicate the top of the bar remembering to rotate the test bar so you are indicating the same side of the bar as you did for the first test ( high spot mark now on top ) . Once again a couple of thou isn't the end of the world .
Another way is the suck it and see test , a 3 inch length of 1 inch dia alloy or brass bar is mounted in the chuck and a length of 2 inches is turned with a sharp tool using a light cut , measure each end of the turned section and compare the measurements , hopefully they are within a thou of each other .
If the vee on the head sits down on the vee on the bed and you can't wobble or rock the head around you probably won't need to worry too much about this test , its only when the head is able to twist or rock because the vee is cut too deep and is not aligning the head to the bed or the head is only sitting on a couple of high spots and can rock around .It sounds complicated but in practise it isn't difficult to do and it can save a lot of head scratching later on trying to work out why the lathe won't turn parallel .
