A straw chopper to be mounted at the rear discharge of a combineharvester includes a housing with a feed opening and a discharge opening witharotor mounted in the housing for chopping and accelerating the crop materials.Therotor has a hub and a plurality of flail blade members where at least some oftheblades are formed of a plate having a mounting hole through the plate formountingon a bushing or pin of the rotor where a bearing surface of the mounting holeof theplate and not the plate surface is coated with material such as tungstencarbide orchromium carbide of a thickness less than 0.020 inches which is harder than aparent material of the plate.
