To answer some of your other questions, generally speaking the steels that we're most familiar with in the cutlery world are both stiffer and harder than titanium.
One of the major benefits of titanium that hasn't been mentioned is that the figures for its tensile strength and its yield strength are very close to one another.
Very simply stated, yield strength refers to the point at which a material will take a permanent bend (become plastically deformed), while tensile strength is a measure of when the material will actually break (or pull apart). As a general rule, most steels will reach their yield strength well before they reach their tensile strength. Thus it's easier to bend steel without breaking it. But this also carries implications with regards to eventual failure due to fatigue and other factors.
With titanium, on the other hand, you must come very close to breaking the material before you'll get it to take a permanent set. When discussing integral lock bars, for example, this can be a very good thing as it allows for an excessive number of locking and unlocking operations with little to no resultant metal fatigue.
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Semper Fi
-Bill
[This message has been edited by Bronco (edited 03-29-2001).]
