There's a rod made just for that I had some years ago and it was called just that hard facing rodNot quite sure what pops was using back in the day to hard face some of his equipment when he was cultivating or plowing. Would you farmers have an idea? I remember him out in the shop at night with the welder on.
My late uncle worked at the Commonwealth Aircraft factory here in Australia for most of his working life . He would case harden parts by sealing them in a ' case ' ; specifically a steel box , surrounded by carbon , then place the lot into a kiln for a number of hours .All Harry Ferguson plow points, shares, land-slides, etc were case hardened to increase wear resistance by up to 300%
The case hardened surface is very hard, but only about .015" thick.
I used to know how to case harden low carbon metal parts in the tool room, but have long since forgotten the details; reading that link refreshed my memory.
Modern hard surface electric-arc welding rods are much simpler to use on small areas.
That's my experience with stainless too. In the paper mill we mostly used 316 because of its corrosion resistance, and there were always scraps lying around. I made some shoes for my back blade, and they are worn out now.As for stainless being "hard" it is all relative. Many SS alloys are pretty poor for wear resistance, tensile, and deflection. Almost everything I do for business is some 300-series with a little duplex and 17-4 and other alloys. It's actually soft, making it difficult to machine. It's not very strong compared to tool steels, and has the wear resistance of a stick of butter. The only saving grace is that it has some different chemical resistances from other materials. When carbon steel is not quite right for an application, and ampco is too expensive, stainless can fill the gap cheaply.
In a nutshell, John Deere would have been an abject failure if he had invented a moldboard made of stainless.
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