In case you were wondering how small a mini mill is take a look here.

Ahead of the mill arrival I started looking into hand scrapping to make the ways flat and parrallel to a precise level.  The first thing I did was build a scraping tool and put a file handle on the end of it.  I bought HSS in the form of two planar blades to have a lifetime supply for cheap.  I also bought some grey iron from a foundry that just closed it's doors here in Minneapolis.  A couple shots of the owner helping me out!  I couldn't resist getting to slabs of pig iron too.  Might find a use for it stiffening the column of the mill.  Anyway This cast iron that was poured right here in Minneapolis so I thought it would be cool to get some extra.  Grey iron is a stable metal that I will use to make a straight edge for using to scrap the ways of the mill.  The first scraping I attempted was to make the flat edge before the mill arrived.  I made 4 different radii blades and a fixture to grind them to those radii.  I got the scraping information from the practical machinist forum.

This is the scrap from the foundry.
The pieces of Pig iron at the top weight 80 lb's each.

Here's the owner sowing me how to notch and then break off pieces with a hammer

That's a massive bench grinder with a
14" abrasive wheel mounted to it!

This is the beginning of scrapping a piece of the grey iron

Here is the scraper tool I made

Making a sliding fit for dowel pins in grinding fixture

This fixture allows me to grind HSS blanks to 4 different radii. 

See video below.

I ended up just grinding them on 12" disc sand 

and then hone by hand w/diamond files

progress on the straight edge

More progress on the straight edge.  Here you can see there are more contact points indicated by the blue spots.  If you want to learn more about scraping there is a lot of good information on practical machinist.  scraping blades

Here is the first time I turned on the mini mill

It has this hard to remove cap that guards the top of the drawbar which will never be put back on because it's too hard.

Before tearing the machine apart I decided to set it up and try it out.  Here I am getting the column setup straight.  I bought the granite slab online for about $150

Here it is milling on a piece of aluminum.  This was a .020 deep into the side of aluminum. I had to buy a new table clamp kit with 3/8" studs because the t-slot clamps I have are to big to fit in this little thing.

Checking factory backlash X axis

Checking the factory Y axis backlash

Force check X axis with lead screws removed to analyze the friction of the saddle on the ways from the factory.

Determining the critical surfaces of the dovetails that will need to be worked on.

From the factory the gib goes crooked when the setscrew are tightened.

To solve the gib going crooked I milled some pockets so that the gib screws bottom out flat into the pockets instead of hitting an angled surface.

Here is a finished pic of the pockets.  I also surface ground the gib you can see here.

After surface grinding I scraped the surface of the gib that contacts the dovetail flat.  This is one of the critical surfaces.

short video showing the upgraded gib

This is how I determined the fix actually worked.

The inconsistent clearance in the X axis ways is shown here

Analyzing how warped the table is

Another assessment of the table

Here's the next shocker-  the milling table itself isn't flat.

I fixed that by scraping it as shown here.

I had to determine the angle of the dovetail to finish the straight edge.  This was my setup to make the measurement.

Before milling I squared un the straight edge on the surface grinder so that it would clamp up square in the milling vice.

After determining the angle of the dovetail I tilted the mill head and matched the angle with the straight edge.  This will be used to scrap in the angle surface of the dovetails on the mill.

The straight edge was scraped after milling to make it flat.

This is how I secured the piece for the scraping.

This picture shows the new angled straight edge with ink on it that transfers to the high spots on the angled dovetail surface.