Not surprised on the AR plate - 'bout 12-13 years ago when I bought my 580, it had been "rode hard and put away wet" - sent it out for some of the repairs, and while it was gone I worked on the 2' bucket - PO had lost teeth and kept digging, so NONE of the 4 weld-on shanks would hold a tooth, they'd just "roll off" - I noticed the newer 2' buckets had FIVE teeth, figgered I'd upgrade/repair, so bought 5 new weld-on shanks and teeth, - my old (always hated) Crapsman 7' grinder decided to die when I put a 9" pipe wheel on it to clean out as much of the welds as possible (no plasma at that time) - Crapsman started slowing down, I got even MORE pissed so LEANED on it, working on a holiday weekend, getting dark, finally it got REAL dark as the Crapsman gasped its last -
No REAL tool stores open on a holiday, but HD had a 9" Hitachi (still got it, it's now a coin toss as to which of us is more "manly")
Finished up the tooth replace, noticed the wear strips on the bucket were semi-imaginary so called up my steel supplier and ordered 4 strips of 1/4x3"x32" AR400 - they cut from a "master plate", at that time it was plasma cut, and I didn't like the slightly rough edges on those strips 'cause I KNEW I'd find 'em with a bare arm when walking behind the hoe in a T shirt, so decided I'd just "break" the edges before I welded 'em on with 7018...
2 edges per strip, 15 amp grinder with 7" NEW disk,
each EDGE of each strip took me about 30 minutes just to put a
SLIGHT bevel on it.
Fast forward about 12 years and those strips have a "patina", but otherwise look like I just put 'em on...
I'm actually kinda surprised you EVER got anywhere with the blaster... Steve