Hard Facing?

[will-max dairy]

In the early days, Dad spent a lot of hours laying down beads of hard facing on plow parts, but it turned out that the time he spent doing that really didn't pay out. The parts weren't lasting that much longer to justify the hours spent welding late into the night. He was further ahead changing the plow points, shins, and landsides more frequently, and getting a few extra hours of much-needed sleep every night.

Exactly... nobody can weld as fast as a forge can crank out a new part.

 

[Keith Williams]

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.

I worked at The Timken Company in the late 1970's to early 1980's. All bearings are case hardened. There are many methods to get the carbon level high on the wear surface of the bearing while maintaining a core that was not thru hardened.
Variables include temp, time, carbon concentration around part, and type of steel at the start.
Large parts were sometimes placed in bone meal to create a carbon rich environment.
I used computer software to come up with formulas to predict hardening depth based on variables.
We then used cost analysis to develop least cost solutions to get the desired results.

Induction hardening was just starting at that time.

Quenching was also highly studied as well as the chemical makeup of the steel.

Keith

 

[will-max dairy]

If you want to low-tech case-harden something... cut a piece of lumber out of a fresh, live tree.

Put it in a kiln and dry it too fast...

You'll case-harden that board in a hurry...