With regard to "loose gibs", I've made and fit two extra cross slides to one of my lathes, a ten inch Logan lathe of 1948 vintage. The cross slides were for using the lathe to mill, were castings bought from Metal Lathe accessories, and were machined mostly on a bench mill, with the second one machined on the lathe its self. They were designed to use a gib with half a dozen gib screws to adjust it, and I used eighth by half inch hot rolled steel, clamped in the dovetail of the cross slides with small C-clamps to machine the angle on each edge, and a light sanding on both sides with some 320 wet or dry paper, to remove the mill scale. They are about fifteen or more years old, haven't been adjusted since the first few months of wear, and are slick moving, with no play, and no discernable wear at all, on a lathe used daily for every kind of work repairing old machinery and engines.
I've rebuilt a few mills and lathes with tapered gibs, and while the concept is "better engineering", in the big picture, it has little real value over "loose gibs" for the home shop, in my opinion. The last time I refit a tapered gib, it was on a milling table that weighed about two tons, was about twelve feet long and three wide, and I rolled it over with a fork lift. The workers had long used up the designed in usable adjustment of the x-axis gib, but kept going for more, and managed to get enough more that the table pulled the gib over its adjusting screw shoulder, lock the table to the knee, and required a come along to pull the table back out, free the gib, and allow the table to be removed. I got a week's pay for repairing that gib, the table, and putting a new notch in the gib, and making a new gib screw, after scraping both the table dovetail flat and straight, and the tapered gib flat and straight. They'd have saved half the cost if they had brought it to me before they jammed it, and had the machine back in service in a day or two instead of over a week. Unless I'm replacing a tapered gib already in place and working, I always go with the "loose gib" and get good service out of it, completely satisfactory in all regards.

mad jack