Titanium alloys

[Peter Atwood]

Years ago I had occasion to do some work in a titanium building of a large industrial scrapyard. This was located near a major aircraft manufacturing facility so they got all sorts of stuff. The titanium building was a vast warehouse that was literally full of giant bins, barrels and piles of titanium scrap.

I asked a guard if I could have a small piece to make some jewelry out of and he responded that I could help myself! So I proceeded to fill a 5 gallon bucket with all kinds of stuff. I have about 30 pounds of sheet stock of various thicknesses, a little tubing, some wire mesh material and varous odd chunks. My question is this: Some of the sheet is stamped with numbers. For example TPI 771 or TP1 786 B.

What the heck do I have? Some pieces are featherlight, others are on the heavy side. Some polish and heat color nicely, others are kind of blah. I have noticed that after working with a torch, some of these harden noticeably.

I'd like to find out a bit more about these alloys so I can use some in knifemaking. Anybody have a clue?

------------------
Peter Atwood

email:fountainman@hotmail.com

 

[Sumo]

Peter,

I think you should send me the bucket of material immediately so that I can get to the bottom of this for you

Seriously though, those markings don't really sound like any Ti alloy I've heard of-but since you said it was near an aircraft manufacturer I'd bet money those are batch numbers for traceability purposes.
More then likely most of it will be 6Al4V I would imagine however.

Hope that helps

Rich

 

[Peter Atwood]

Rich,

You may be right about the batch numbers but some of the pieces are definitely different materials.

I'm thinking that there must be a lot of different alloys for various special applications but for some reason, most of what is commercially available to knifemakers and the general public is this 6Al4V. Maybe because it is the cheapest or most commonly produced or most machinable.

Anyhow, I'm going to use some of it. I was rooting around the bucket yesterday and found some lengths of band material which is perfect for pocket clips. Made a test clip, polished it and heat colored it with a torch. Very cool.

------------------
Peter Atwood

email:fountainman@hotmail.com