hardfacing - ugh!

[villemur]

Today's project was to try to put together an ice chisel. We've been doing a lot of ice fishing this year and although we have an auger, I wanted a backup. I made the blade out of a piece of mild steel, 3/8" thick by 4" wide. I used a stepped tooth design kind of like a Jiffy chisel I saw. The blade is probably going to be too wide, but this is just a prototype.

Anyway, I realized that the mild steel blade probably wouldn't stay sharp, so I grabbed some 30 year-old hardfacing rod that my father had given me. I have no idea exactly what type of rod it is, all I was told is that it is hardfacing rod. The rod is 1/8" and I experimented with different amperages. I ended up at about 100 amps. The rod would only run with a fairly long arc. And it was almost impossible to get anything but a thick amount of coverage. And where the blade came to a point I would just melt through it.

So after the hardfacing I had to pretty much start over with profiling the blade. And of course, now that the blade was hardfaced it was much harder to grind it to shape. I was amazed at what a difference it made. So is this the wrong application for hardfacing rod? Is there a way to do this without just goobering it on thickly?

[JimDon]

hardfacing

I think your problem may be your 30-year old hardface rod. Why don't you buy a new box and try that. I just bought a box of "Wear" rod made by U.S. Forge, Part No. 04631 from Menards. Ran it at about 70 amps on an old AC welder and it ran so smoothly it was unbelievable. Ran like 7018 on a new DC machine. All you want to do is lay it on top of the existing steel, you do not want it to blend in with a lot of molten metal cause that will defeat the purpose of the hard face. Try that and let us know how it turns out. Also, if you're in a super cold area, you might want to try some pre-heat with a torch to bring that ice chisel up to temp before hardfacing. The cold will interfere with running a proper bead in weather like this (-20 at night, 5 above in the daytime.) Good luck,
Jim Don

[villemur]

I haven't had a chance to buy any new hardfacing rod yet, but I will the next time I'm at the welding store. I did get to try the chisel out on the ice yesterday. I chiseled through eight inches of nice hard ice and it worked pretty well. Better than I thought it would. It's still a heck of a lot of work, but if the auger breaks I now have a backup.