oXObsidianXo inquires as to the rarity and strength of our champion gladius!
As for the cost: Beta titanium alloys in general are expensive and hard to get, but so are many fantastic steel alloys. It's the working of beta Ti that can be most costly, human or otherwise. It resists everything you try to do to it, and will break your bits, mortify your motors, burn your belts, and crap on your cutters. It will then try to ignite your workshop and short out your equipment. It stays resilient well up into forging heat and even then keeps a dastardly springyness about it (yet has a narrow window of opportunity in which to forge before it gets fried). If the chips ignite it burns so brightly that it can cause "arc burns" to your eyes like a welder, and the dust can't be allowed to build up anywhere. I love it.
Regarding hardenability: This titanium, alloyed with niobium, can be hardened quite a bit, and will reach my goal of Rc53 without becoming brittle. This is because the niobium is alloyed in enough quantity to allow the beta crystal phase (body-centered cubic) to be stabilized at room temperature without decaying back into alpha phase (close-packed hexagonal). This makes it a "beta Ti" and opens up possibilities for real heat-treatment including capturing hard martensite grain structures (alpha prime). This TiNb is fine-grained, smooth and strikingly lustrous. It has great qualities for use as a sword, and seems to hold an edge well.
As for rarity: I recently had the pleasure of a long conversation with a top metallurgist/engineer who specializes in TiNB exotic alloys. The metallurgist confirmed and greatly elaborated on much of what I know from research and experimentation, as well as explained what to do (and NOT to do) when working this alloy, and why. He furthermore states that this metal is extremely rare and difficult to make; there's only a small handful of foundries that can make a TiNb alloy.
When TiNB alloys are made, it's for extreme and expensive situations: space vehicle parts, fighter jet engine nozzles, rocket booster nozzles, combat helicopter parts, and other things that must stay strong and resilient under very high heat, cold, and intense forces in general. It's also used for human joint replacements (titanium and niobium are non-toxic and, when alloyed, have high wear resistance).
This alloy possibly contains up to 0.5% iron, because three fancy laser spectrograph readings said so. However, the TiNb metallurgist and I both suspect that it could have been surface contamination. Rather than theory-and-conjecture it away, the laser's readings will stand until further analysis. Iron, when alloyed in titanium, disperses into very fine grains and causes something of a deep-hardening effect. It's also a potent beta-stabilizing element. Iron in small amounts can be found in Ti beta alloys used by the U.S. defense department.
I hope everyone finds this information interesting!
