Has anyone worked with Hardface?

[Cougar_222]

I am thinking of toying with the idea of making a blade or two combining (stick welded) Hardface and a decent carbon or maybe low alloy steel with harface for the edge area. I picked up some Forney rods - medium abrasion, medium impact, forgable metal. From a few test beads, the metal works well warm, but once cool - it is hard material and will take pounding. I'm using some for surfacnig an anvil.

In the distant past I have used these general type of rods for adding good edge metal to lawn mover blades, create wood and stone working chisels, and even make some decent looking (but poor choice of base materials in retrospect) knife designs that hold good edges. I suspect Heat treating hardfaced materials / blades would be problematic. Unlike in days gone by, it is now challenging to find an 'as deposited' composition analysis for many rods - and a best guess (based on properties) will only tend to give you a ball park composition.

These are my initial hesitation issues - and I was wondering if anyone else had tried to work with this for relatively inexpensive but usually quite functional (if you are lucky and careful) knives.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

The first question would be - "To what advantage would you do that?"
There is absolutely no good reason ( and several bad ones) to try and make a hard thin edge on less than desirable steel. If you use good steel, you won't need the hard face.

The biggest reason not to do this is that there would be little or no hard face rod left after grinding the bevel and sharpening the blade. Remember, they are called hard FACE rods - they are not intended to extend the edge of a thin piece of steel.

 

[Cougar_222]

To some degree hardfacing an edge has seemed to help in the past where I was lucky or informed enough to lay the right base metal then the right number of layers of hardface on top. or deposit the metal in a way (from the side - carefully) that would give me a decent layer for what would become a final edge. Mainly the best applications seemed to be picks, earth working tools and maybe some wood / stone tools. From what I have seen the homogenous consistent known steels worked with here in this forum are far more reliable and known, although they do require considerable heat treat expertise for some. My thoughts in this post were along the lines of perhaps making up a beater / brush whacker that would take abuse, or maybe improving an ax edge to have a stain resistant edge, and maintain a decent sharpness.

From experience the properties of the metal are decent to good, but the trend of today selling of putting it into a mystery metal - with probably high amounts of Manganese, some chrome, fairly high carbon and who knows what else tend to put it more into a good for backyard use / abuse category rather than anything anyone could consider selling.

Given the advantages of what & how you are working here - I'm doubting that it has much more use than for hammer type butt ends on knives. Wanted to ask if anyone else has tried hardface and to what ends.

 

[Cougar_222]

For a couple of knives that I shaped the blades, made handle and butt ends for, I experimented a bit with adding (welding) decent base metals followed by hardface to the butt ends. With some playing (before owning a forge which would have made the process MUCH easier) I could get pretty much any shape I desired, and ended up with a tough hard material that I could use to hammer with, cut / scratch into rocks and / or create an artistic shape that would take a mirror polish. Sometimes it is nice to have a very hard and durable back end for a survival type blade that doesn't need to include additional Heat Treat concerns.

If I can get this pic to come through - will show you one example. Of course - were I to have had a forge working - I suspect it would have been considerably better.

- Here is a link in case it does not insert - https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7k5o9gttoblqum/Damascus%20with%20Purple%20Heartwood.JPG