Can I repair bush hog sheet metal with stick welder?

[newbury]

If you do all the fab and prep work, you can probably find someone to MIG it for you for an hour or so of shop time.

It greatly depends on the individual situation. To load a 5' or bigger cutter, drive it, unload it, reload it, may not be worth it. If you learn to patch it once it should be easier next time.

Although with the present price of steel redoing the entire deck does become more attractive.

 

[LD1]

Any pictures of the thing? Might get more accurate advise on patch/replace and the best way to go about it.

 

[Gordon Gould]

If you are good with a torch why not braze weld it with a bronze rod. It will be a lot stronger than you think and doesn't require to much heat and it won't try to wrinkle up on you so bad. You will need to clean up the old steel good though before you weld. Bizarre as it sounds I have braze welded patches on my dozer blade because I didn't have a stick welder and I didn't have enough torch to fusion weld. They are still there after a couple years.

gg

 

[BeezFun]

My bush hog has a 1/4" steel replacement deck on it that wont ever wear out or rust thru in my lifetime.

I looked at doing a replacement but it seemed quite involved. The mid section of the deck where the gearbox is located is about 1/2" plate and runs from one side of the deck to the other, that has to be removed from the old decking and reattached to a new deck. Need to cut the bolt pattern for the gearbox flange in the replacement material after it's welded in place, not a show stopper but it has to be done from the bottom side to get the hole location. Then tying all that into the sides of the deck and support brackets seemed really involved to me. Maybe different BH designs would be easier to deal with. Or maybe by replacement you're referring to replacing the largest deck pieces possible that aren't tied into other structural components.

 

[LD1]

Picture?

 

[BeezFun]

Photo from bottom side is blurry, but you can see the light shining through holes.

 

[LD1]

If it were mine, I'd re-deck the whole thing.

I have re-skinnes a lot of snow plows. Lots of support ribs and all. A rotary cutter looks easy In Comparison

 

[newbury]

Photo from bottom side is blurry, but you can see the light shining through holes.


View attachment 453820View attachment 453821

Heck that looks better than most of the ones I see on CL with "slight rust".

 

[BeezFun]

If you do all the fab and prep work, you can probably find someone to MIG it for you for an hour or so of shop time.

That's a very good idea. I found a guy that will come here for $80/hr, has all the mig stuff on his truck. I doubt it would take him an hour to do this if I get everything prepped.

 

[MESSMAKER]

I think you could cut about 6 patches and tack them down with very little work. Might not look too pretty but probably last for years. Use something heavier than 20g.