JKMccoy told me his grandad was a welder, and he would run a hard surfacing rod down the edge of the blades every year. My 15' batwing blades are 5 years old. It's quite the chore to replace them, and $300. I thought I'd give this a go. On the box of welding rods, it is labeled that the rods create a surface of a Rockwell hardness of 62.



Weld, clean, weld, clean. Repeat until it was built up enough.



Grind em sharp.

Good job!

That a good idea and looks good. let us know how it works

Nice! Great idea!

Interesting that you did that. My now deceased old neighbor (bad neighbor, not the good neighbor) said that his son did what you did to put a harder edge on the shredder blades. As for my shredder, which now has new blades, I had just sharpened them every season, and had taken off a lot of metal over time. It’s time to sharpen the new blades, maybe, and I’ve wondered if removing metal to sharpen exposes softer metal which wears faster.

Most likely the entire blade is made out of the same steel.

But, blades do get shorter. Most of the work done is at the tip of the blade. Eventually they will get short enough they do not overlap any longer, and will leave strips of uncut grass.

That's pretty cool
How does a surfacing rod differ from your typical welding rod? Or does it?

I like your style, sir. But what do you do about blade balance? Is it significant enough to shorten bearing life?

Hard surfacing rods produces much harder steel than an E6011 or E7018.

Centrifugal blades, bolted to a flywheel that probably weighs over a hundred pounds. I doubt if one blade is an ounce or two heavier than the other, the flywheel or bearings will notice.

Bush Hog batwing shredders are rated to cut up to 3" trees, if memory serves. But, mine mostly tends the rifle range, and right up against tree lines. After the blade rehab, you would have thought I mowed the rifle range with my ZTR lawn mower.

It works well, I always put some hard spray on mine when new, doubles the life.

Aren’t new/freshly sharpened blades great? Mine always find a rock, limb, crescent wrench, edge of driveway soon after sharpening

not enough to matter, seen same thing done. I personally couldnt tell the difference but this was pre-china everything

On my 1978 Bush Hog Shredder would cut just about anything the tractor could push down. I used Rock Crusher Rods similar to Lincoln Wearshield® ABR and they cut like new for years. I hit a big iron ore rock and chipped a chunk off of both blades. I stopped and inspected them and the chipped areas looked like they had been knapped like flint arrowhead and extremely sharp. The blades lasted long enough to get loose on the attachment bolt.

Hmmm... Pretty good idea!

Maybe I should do this for my ZTR blades. I hit all kinds of stuff. I found a grill grate one day, it passed through all 3 blades before exiting out the chute, what a mess