Stellite has never been used, only Delchrome C, which in the old days was made by a company called Stellite and thus the confusion.
As I found out a couple of weeks ago, Stellite, about 30 different grades, but the most used and useful is 6B, it has excellent wear properties, but not that high in hardness. Delchrome C an excellent material, higher hardness and tough, for lower temp applications, like our aircooled engines, before someone says the engine gets bloody hot, it doesn't when you compare it to where Stellite can be used. What I also found out is that the companys making hard facing materials, work very closely together to reduce fake stuff that can be had out there. It was the only time I have seen a welding machine and huge purpose made chuck move independently of each other to apply weld to a huge industrial valve seat.
Ken, I thought even you could work that one out, as I have said before, ease of manufacture, the tooling was also old resulting in too much additional material to be removed in the grinding stage, that is why we sell plus 0.020'' tappets. It also takes away the loss in processing due to incorrect braze penetration when brazing, its not an upgrade - very early tappets were one piece cast iron, so nothing new. The material will be the same as the old tappet tip, so again no real upgrade.
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