Hardfacing ideas

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I finished my skid steer bucker repair/hardface job, and ended up with about 8.5 lbs. of leftover hardfacing wire. .035, fluxcore stuff from HTP.  I plan to store it, in a tempurature controlled location in the house, with some moisture absorptive material, but I thought that I could use some of it to hardface a few things aroung the house/garden.garage befire I pull it out of the feeder and store it.1) Lawnmore blade edge?2) Machete edge? (great garden tool, but it gets the BEAT) Looking for more ideas. $150 worth of wire, just sitting and trying to avoid rusting, nags at my subconsious. Even my consious is consious of it.Picaxe tip? (seems pretty hard yet ductile already, thinking I should leave it alone)-andy-
Reply:Post hole auger or clam shell diggers.  I would not hardface a lawnmower blade, it may become very difficult to sharpen.6 Miller Big Blue 600 Air Paks2 Miller 400D6 Lincoln LN-25's4 Miller Xtreme 12VS2 Miller Dimension 812 4 Climax BW-3000Z bore welders Hypertherm 65 and 85Bug-O Track BugPair of Welpers
Reply:Originally Posted by RedneckJazzI finished my skid steer bucker repair/hardface job, and ended up with about 8.5 lbs. of leftover hardfacing wire. .035, fluxcore stuff from HTP.  I plan to store it, in a tempurature controlled location in the house, with some moisture absorptive material, but I thought that I could use some of it to hardface a few things aroung the house/garden.garage befire I pull it out of the feeder and store it.1) Lawnmore blade edge?2) Machete edge? (great garden tool, but it gets the BEAT) Looking for more ideas. $150 worth of wire, just sitting and trying to avoid rusting, nags at my subconsious. Even my consious is consious of it.Picaxe tip? (seems pretty hard yet ductile already, thinking I should leave it alone)-andy-
Reply:"hardface" can be anything from a build-up wire to a very-very-very hard brittle abrasion-resistant wire. Or things somewhere in between.So, all that said, Ixnay (also known as NO!!!!   ) on welding on a lawnmower blade.  At all.  Machete blade?  Iffy on that one, but probably not.  If the 'hardface' alloy is hard, it will not be impact resistant.  Which means that when you swing the machete and clip something hard (rock on the ground maybe from your forceful swing), the hard brittle part will crack and send a shard flying of hard brittle alloy.  Also if it is that hard, how in the heck will you ever sharpen the blade?  One use for some moderate hardface wire (most likely what the 0.035 wire is, as most of the 'serious' hardface wires are usually only available in a bigger wire diameter and/or a big wire spool size) is the skid shoes on a snow blower or small snow plow blade (not the BIG machines like a highway dapartment would run, as those parts are usually already some sort of AR steel to begin with).  Or some farm equipment, like an earth blade or a plow blade.Use up the wire on hardfacing someone else's skidsteer buckets.  Or add even more criss-cross hardface wear strips onto your bucket.  Or make another smaller bucket.  Or make a snow scraper blade for the skid steer and hardface parts of that.But don't weld a mower blade.    The best laid schemes ... Gang oft agley ...
Reply:Thanks for the tip regarding the mower blade. They're cheep anyway.+1 on the snow blade for the skidder, been thinking about that for a while.Probably just rebuild the machete blade with regular wire.Sorry about misspelling conscious.It was... not a conscious error...  -az-
Reply:Question. Does this wire require the use of a shielding gas. I could use some building up on the tips of my backhoe bucket and only have the HF 90 amp flux core welder.What was the full name to your wire source?
Reply:Here's the link:http://www.htpweld.com/products/welding_wire/index.htm3/4 of the way down the page, item 81035.Doesn't say that it needs gas, but it does. I used it with C10. Tried without gas, lots of crackle and very porous beads.-az-