I have made gib strips from brass. Given a dovetail slide, one way to make the gib is to clamp the slide on the mill table, with the dovetail facing up and set parallel to the axis. Clamp the blank strip into the dovetail using a piece of parallel steel bar in the vee between the blank and the bottom of the slide with toolmakers clamps. Machine the top. Then turn the blank over, with the now angled face on the first side resting in a piece of shim on the bottom of the slide and machine the second face down very nearly to the top of the slide. Job done, if that makes sense.

Always a softer material so it wears in preference to the slideway. Brass on small machines is best but large industrial machines might use cast iron.

A reasonably good finish so it doesn't sit on peaks but not mirror smooth as that would expel oil and become "sticky"

Oil grooves are fine if you can actually get oil into them otherwise a bit of grease will do.

Holes? Some spot faces or hemi-spheres so the screws stop the strip from sliding out. Just tight enough to stop any sloppyness.

The easiest way I have found for making gibstrips is to cut then with a slitting saw from a plate of material held in a tilting vice. The advantage of this is that the cutting forces are low if you take small cuts and the reaction force to the cutting is along the axis of the plate and hence bending of the plate is minimised. The only thing to be careful of is the plate must be fully annealled or hot rolled. If you use cold rolled material any strip cut from the edge will be bent by the relief of internal stresses.

If the gib is running against cast iron then steel or brass are both good materials.

Mike

You know,,, I don't know how I missed that on the first time through, guess my mind started racing on the idea,

regards

Brian

At Dean Smith & Grace Ltd. earlier, short type cross slide gib slips, that were one screw adjusted (diamond shape in section) from the rear of the slide, were made of high grade cast iron. The later long type cross slide that had multiple cap screw fixings and grub screw wear adjusters were made of EN 3 or equivalent. The slips were supplied from stores in incremental sizes ( plus .010", .020", .030" and so on ) rough machined. The cast iron slips although more difficult to hold because of their shape, were by far the easiest to scrape. Steel slips were far more time consuming to scrape and fit and I was always disappointed with finish that could be achieved. All fixing screw holes and adjusting dimples were marked from the slide. Oil feed grooves were marked and grooved from oil nipple holes and varied in design from short vee type to long zig-zag type. Tightness should be firm, not tight and allow the slide to move with slight drag.

. . .L and king pins and shackle pins on old cars.

Russell.

Every gib strip on all my machines are some form of steel, tapered rhombus shaped with screws at either end to adjust. They need to be perfectly flat, precise and smooth as silk no oil ways.

Pretty sure lathe cross slide is a decent casting, its broke a few times mid job. Didn't fancy the cost and no time to faff around making I usually weld up with inherent warping, file and diamond stone it back in.

The multi pinned rhombus style as used in Myfords dead easy, anything will do as long as two rubbing edges are parallel.

Its been a long time since done any pro scraping after a full precision regrind. Only time it was done was where punter requested as it aids oil flow but detrimental to wear ie less contact area. Funny almost every scrape job ever seen customer stating ive only took a couple of thou off turned in to 10 of thous to put right, its a fine art.

Interesting discussion by Dan Gelbart that touches on a few of the comments mentioned.

Opinion is that scraping is better than grinding, I always thought the other way around but the evidence is persuasive.

As well lapped, or scraped surfaces will not wear due to hydrostatic fluid between…now can that be applied to a gib?

regards

Brian