Hardfacing homemade chisel plow

[Botnst]

I guess it’s less a plow and more of a bucket mod but couldn’t say that clearly and succinctly in the title.

My son-in-law and I are building a removable denture for the tractor FE loader. Bucket is 72” inside dimension. I have lots of scrap mild steel that I collect as available. So I have two, 72”x6”x5/8” flat bars. One of them will fit inside the bucket and attached to each side of the bucket with two large bolts to welded angle iron on each end. Got it?

The teeth are over-all 9” long by 31/2” tall and shaped sort of like Nebraska. The notch fits tightly over the blade. Differing from Nebraska, it has another notch through which the previously described flat bar and welded in place with three passes per side forming an inverted “t”. The tooth also projects tightly under the FE loader. Total of 7 teeth. Welding everything together with 3/16 7018. I have a 50# tin.

A friend gave me 10# of Hobart 40 TiC hardfacing rods. They're big, like 5/16” or so. So I cranked up my welder to about 160 amps and promptly gouged a hole into a piece of plate. I backed off until It ran smooth without undercut at about 130 or so. I got advice not to completely face the chisel, just run a flattish bead around the edges and across the cutting tip. Wellllll, beads never were flat but hopefully not to badly humped. Aaaaaand I made some pimples and dribbles down some of the sides. It’ll buff out.

Got my handy-dandy Bigazz Harbor Freight grinder and squared up the edges.

Today I learned I should have preheated the teeth to between 100-200F to avoid cracking and spalling. No apparent fractures anywhere and I guess I won’t know about spalling until I run that sucker.

The reason I built it is I need to quarry clay and the long, even, blunt FE loader blade will make my turf tires spin pushing against clay so we figured making the tractor dentures will bust up the clay so I can pick it up.


Comments? Questions?

We will probably finish fabrication this weekend. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

Comments?