Hobie Welding Kit Questions

I'm pretty hard on my both my Hobie's.  I have my share of scratches & gouges in the keels at the bow and stern.  Some of the stern scratches are caused by my "unique" solo loading/unloading into my truck bed off of the carts without unloading the kayaks.  Others are the usual: rocks, concrete ramps & curbs, etc.  I've looked at the thread about laminating materials to the keel and not sure I want to commit in that direction.  So I can up with the potentially bad plan of utilizing the "welding" kit and filler rods Hobie sells.  I would like this to be preventive maintenance, creating very small wear pads.  Here are my questions:

Has anyone used the welding kit/rod that Hobie's sells, to fill the gouges?   Will the filler rods bond to the hull well?   I am assuming the welded area will look different, if I do this my plan would be to shape the built up welded area then lightly sand the area to "blend" the areas into the bottom. 

I built a wooden keel guard with 4 eyelets. The forward two use a bungie hooking the rear lacing button. The aft eyelets use a short bungie slung just forward of the rudder. It takes about 30 second to put it on and take it off.

Also, check out this thread about applying a permanent keel guard.
http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=13265.0