Soome times you just can't win.

[burywoodturners]

I have an Axminster lathe I bought new twenty years ago, and the Bristol levers were made from plastic, and unsurprisingly the broke after a year or two. I went on ebay and saw some with cast alumimium levers. ihad to wait for a month for the chinese postal system to deliver them, and I tried to fit them only to discover that the whilst the threads throughut the machine were metric, the one in the banj and the tailstock were Whitworth, and the same was true on my second Axminster lathe. So I now have three spare 8mm Bristol levers!
Ron

[JohnHewes]

I bought some of these aluminium ones on eBay, they broke too!
Now I use a 14mm spanner on the shaft.
If anyone has a source of good ones, I would like to know, please.
John

[Paul Hannaby]

My local tool shop sells metric Bristol locking levers by Trend and Record.

[APH]

Axminster themselves do excellent alloy levers, https://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster-locking-lever-male-m8-x-40mm-alloy-953471 not as cheap as the eBay stuff, but solid and well made.
I've never understood why Axi don't use these ones on their own kit. They are SO much better and add an air of quality to any machine they're fitted to.

Getting Bristol levers in Imperial is trickier and a lot more expensive. WDS (http://www.wdsltd.co.uk) do a very small selection.

[Bryan Milham]

Have you considered drilling out the Whitworth thread and re-tapping with a metric thread that you can get a Bristol lever for?

You don't say what the size of the Whit thread is so I'll assume 3/8th, so even if you have to go to 12mm, you can get a Helicoil inset set quite cheaply and bring the size down to 10mm again.

[burywoodturners]

I was thinking of smashing off the old plastic parts and aralditinga wooden knob on, better than searching through the shavings every time a want to move the tool rest
Ron