Tim wrote:
Who has the best deal on a precision level?


If you want to level your lathe, you may also look up
Rollie's Dad's Method.
The issue with a lathe isn't so much level, although using
one is a technique to get what is really needed, pure
parallelism between the spindle/chuck axis and the ways,
so that you don't turn tapers.

If level were the only objective, they'd need some reeally fancy gimbals
on board ships to keep their lathes from rocking with the waves
and swells. However, shipboard lathes can turn taper-free shafts
just as well as land-based ones, so long as the carriage travels
perfectly parallel to the spindle axis. Twisting the bed
to make the ways parallel to each other does this.

/mark