I just sharpened up my blade for the season. I use a file and get it plenty sharp in 10-15 minutes. I just did my low cut for the start of the season, it cut like butter. I'm a residential mower but I've been using the same blade for 5 years now and it does great getting sharpened once a year. I'm surprised to read how many replace their blades after pretty low hour use. I realize commercial mowing is totally different but that seems like it would add up to a lot of money over the course of a season and years.
I'd be curious if anyone knows what Rockwell hardness rating different blades have to compare durability and longevity. There's a got to be a sweet spot for mower blades that combines decent edge retention without being brittle. Similar to an axe.
Nothing like an axe two totally different types of cutting edges and load dynamics.
Keech Castings used to do the raw castings for a lot of competition axes
They are made from an alloy very similar to excavator teeth, very hard & gets harder the more it is used.
Judging from the sparks most bar blades I see are 08 to 1 carbon which brings them out in the range of carbon tool steel.
Blades need to be tough rather than hard so they bend rather than break.
Some Chineese bar blades appear to be a casting which is very dangerous but casting is the cheapest method of shaping metals so I was not surprised as they are made to be the cheapest possible product not a servicable product.
Swing back blades are higher carbon again and much harder because they can swing back rather than having to take a heavy blow
As for Gators "electrofusion" of tungston carbide, well that is what happens when you let advertising copywriters loose on some thing they have no ideal about.
Electrofusion is a copyright term of Plessy from memory and reffers specifically to a method of welding plastic. don't believe me, Google it.
But electrofusion does sound a lot sexier than dissolution heat treating.
The slightest exercising of the "little grey cells" should have come up with alarm bells.
The "fused" blade, resists errosion & abrasion and avoids chipping, which are the mechanical mechanisms that blunten the blade.
However the blade that is twice as hard to blunten is no harder to sharpen.
So how do you sharpen the blade, you abrade the surface, but the surface is more resistant to abrasion, er , dosn't quite gell does it.
