blade alloys?

R

rdavis1

Forum Newbie
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.
 
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.

:devilish:
 
Skippydiesel said:
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.

:devilish:
Click to expand...
You have answered your own question.

Well if you don't the blades getting dull and wearing just mow air. Even water wears metal.

Heat treated blades wears less while maintaining flexibility. All the blades I have are stamped steel and then some are heat treated The outer is a lot harder while the internal is softer.

One way is heating the metal to red hot and oil quenching
 
Probably the best lades are made with marbain steel

www.fisherbarton.com

Marbain

The Marbain heat-treating process is a controlled, proprietary operation that creates ultra-hard properties without the brittleness.
www.fisherbarton.com www.fisherbarton.com
 
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