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Has Anyone ever Hard Surfaced Heavy Harrow Teeth?

12K views 18 replies 14 participants last post by  albertabuck 
#1 ·
I was wondering if anyone has tried hard surfacing heavy harrow teeth to increase the life? We will be changing teeth on a harrow and was wondering if there is any down sides to doing this? When a person hard surfaces them would they be too brittle if a person quenched the last 4-5 inches in oil to increase the hardness? I was thinking for about a dollar of hard surfacing per tooth I could increase the life by double or more. I was planning on hard surfacing the last 4-5 inches of the front side of the 9/16 harrow tooth. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks SouthernSK
 
#3 ·
Primer the carbide is great except for the cost. I need 9/16 diameter and most carbide teeth are 5/8. They claim they last up to 4 times longer and are nearly 2-3 times the price of my 9/16 tines I bought. It would cost me as much for the carbide teeth as I paid for the 70ft heavy harrow. They claim carbide sometimes falls off if it hits rocks. I was thinking for about a $1.00 a tooth I could hard surface them and would have no risk of them breaking off. I was wondering if anyone has ever done this and if there is any problems with it.
 
#4 ·
I hadn't yet priced those tips but didn't know they were that much. I have a 70' Brant with 5/8 tines that I need to do something with. It only gets used every couple years now but some of the teeth are getting close to 50% worn.

I would think the hard surfacing would be less than $1.00 unless you're including your time in the deal. I would think if you kept the hard surface fairly short, narrow, and cool you wouldn't have trouble. If it did break off, less of the tine would be gone. Quenching would make it too brittle unless you heated again afterwards, but it would be very hard to get the exact temperature to temper it again.

I should try hard surfacing a broken tine when I go out to the farm just to see how brittle it becomes.
 
#6 ·
What about those weld on harrow tine extensions. Some guy by Yorkton who also makes those bin skirts. Just a high wear steel of some kind you lap weld onto your worn tines. They looked like a bit over a buck depending on size. My bg6000 needs the front two rows lengthened as they wear first. I thought these would be good for that. I wonder though about breakage or bending at the weld. Weld with short (1"<) passes and peen the crap out of the beads like cast?
 
#9 ·
I hard surfaced 4 inches of a old tooth without preheating and just air cooling. When I put it in vice and put a pipe on it, it broke right in the middle of the hard surfacing 2 inches up from the bottom. I will try preheating it and cooling it slower to see if it helps. If nothing else I will hard surface the round bottom of the new tooth where I wil not have to worry about breakage. When you run 4 inches up the side the tooth it will curl a bit from the contraction of cooling.
 
#10 ·
Don't waste your time welding or even with the carbide. Usually when harrow teeth wear out the metal is fatigued to the point where the coil will be at higher risk of breakage. Nobody wants harrow teeth laying around their field and any rough edges on a harrow tine will affect the even-ness of straw flow.

My advice is to just replace the teeth when they need it. Call one of these guys, I'm sure they have nearly the best price anywhere:
Corner Equipment
Killarney Farm Supply204-523-4888 - Home
 
#13 ·
Maybe a person could salvage what is left of the tooth of a worn out one, cut it off and weld it on to another worn out one. Overlap it at least a couple inches on the back side so it wont interfere with trash flow. Make one good one out of two. Would want to try a few before you got too carried away to see if they stand up.
 
#14 ·
I'm no fan of harrowing but I would try just for a test, take some ruffly 120-150F water, heat up say the last 4" orange and quench in the hot water, it will only harden the surface

Take a file and run it across a new tooth and the one you just hardened, see what ya come up with
 
#18 ·
I have welded heavy harrow teeth on the back side of the tooth with success. I lapped them about 8" and welded them. Only reason I was welding them was that only a few were broken and did not want to put a new one on than cut it off to match the rest. I would never weld if I was doing them all, just buy new ones and do them all.
 
#19 ·
Unless they were the style you used to be able to get for the smaller harrows years ago, I can't see a harrow tooth holding up after welding it. And as someone said, last thing you want is them breaking at the coils and ending up in a tire or worse.

The style I'm speaking of in the past were for the 3/8 or 1/2 teeth for your typical three bar mounted harrows. Fyfe Parts sold them as I recall. Was a tooth extension with a bushing welded to the back of the extension with a small hole in the side towards the bottom. They were welded prior to hardening. Came either straight or with the dog leg in it. You slid it over the wore tooth and once positioned correctly, you simply gave it a short little weld right in that hole, and since this was well below the top of the bushing, the tooth would not break as the bushing itself actually did the work as they were a snug fit. Time consuming but they did seem to work ok, however, eventually the coils started to let go. Was some Morris I did this to. Still have a few spare or broken ones kicking around if someone wanted a pic I could grab one.
 
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