between 16 45 mesh and is applied in any predetermined pattern or area it is initially adhered to the surface through a water base adhesive 14 such as water glass the article 16 with the adhesively retained bulk carbide 12 is permitted to dry as by air drying at 17 or to shorten the process a low temperature baking a cobalt coated heavy metal refractory carbide such as tungsten carbide powder 18 is mixed with a super alloy based powder or matrix 20 generally in the ratio of approximately 50 of each by weight forming a blended hardfacing spray powder 10 a cobalt coated tungsten carbide powder 18 is generally available commercially as a tungsten carbide plasma spray hardfacing powder and the super alloy based matrix powder blended therewith is also a generally commercially available flame spray powder such as stellite co base or deloro ni base stellite and deloro are trademarks of stoody deloro stellite inc for cobalt base wear resistant alloys and for nickel chromium boron silicon wear resistant alloys respectively the refractory carbide powder 18 is sized on the order of 325 mesh u s standard sieve and the matrix powder 20 is sized on the order of 200 mesh providing a fine powder blend the surface of the article 16 having the adhesively applied bulk carbide 12 is then heated to the incipient melting temperature of the article base metal i e on the order of 2600 u00b0 f at the surface this surface heating process can be accomplished by any convenient means but in the preferred embodiment is accomplished through an oxi acetylene torch 22 using a reducing flame which has a flame temperature of approximately 5300 u00b0 5500 u00b0 f once the surface 16 to be hardfaced is heated to the appropriate.