blade alloys?

Hi All,

We spend quite a bit of time in the "saddle" and change blades about every 30 seconds (seems like). I was wondering if anyone had experimented with different steel alloys for blades?

For example, Hatfield's manganese steel (used in railroad tracks) work hardens. Has anyone tried to make mower blades from this alloy or others of good wear properties? I'm not interested in feeding the consumables market a steady diet of money if I could buy a blade with 3x (or 10x) the life of conventional steel blades.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Lawnmower blades are kind of a metal art. Too hard and they are subject to harmony cracking leading to parts of blades that go flying. Too soft and the wear quickly do to the abrasive nature of mowing. Some blades have a Tungsten carbide coating on the bottom of the cutting edge to help resist wear.

The blade makers have already figured out what works for them. It's up to the end user to determine what brand works best on their particular machine.

It was/is not uncommon in agriculture to have wearing points/blades using bi-metal "sandwiches ".
The idea being that one metal provides hardness/resistance to wear, the other impact resistance/structural strength.
The way the metals have been combine & shaped, will often result in wear maintained sharpness ie as the edge/point wears, it remains sharp as one metal wears/erodes quicker than the other, keeping the point/edge sharp.
I don't have extensive experince of mower blades but the little I have suggests this is not a common technology in the industry.
Why not? Could be there is more money to be made out of the existing blade types ie no financial incentive for manufactures to supply self sharpening blades.