My little Busy Bee X2 seems to have two table settings based on the gib screws - nice and loose with noticeable slop, or no slop but real stiff.

The biggest help with this has been loosening the adjusting screws on the X-axis leadnut - before, if you had the gibs tightened enough to remove most of the slop, the table would stop moving halfway. Obviously some alignment issue with the leadnut and the leadscrew. Loosening the bolts that hold it on made backlash go to all hell but made the table consistent through its whole travel.

Soaking the ways in oil made the table at least movable in both axes, but I was fiddling with an RF45 clone the other day and those handwheels are silky smooth. What do I have to do to my X2 to make the handwheels as smooth as that?

The X2 on display at Busy Bee is nice and smooth but it also has a half inch of play in either axis...

Does anyone have any good instructional links on way + gip strip lapping?

Hi from a newbie
I've had my x2 3 days. Removed ways to remove red cosmoline (?) gunk. Lapped gibs on a piece of glass rescued from a scanner. Used 120 grit, then 220, 400, 600 and finally 1200 or 1500, being careful to maintain even pressure, actually more pressure on the center, as this was the high spot. Came out polished like a new pocket knife. Reassemble using nylock nuts on the handwheels instead of skinny double nuts that I couldn't fine 2 skinny wrenches for. PB Blaster for the initial lube, tighten gibs ever so slowly and incrementally, leaving the set screws to hold the bronze nuts last, and the 2 screws on the retainer for the Y axis slightly loose until everything else was working smoothly.