Titanium for lockbacks

[Ryomaru]

Newbie on steels and handles, anyone here know why titanium is more common in liner or framelock handles and not on lockbacks? Is it just due to price or there's more to it?

 

[ballknives]

I personally would use titanium on all styles because of weight and ability to anodize and strength. Cost could be a factor to not use titanium

 

[JCaswell]

Titanium is a good choice for linerlocks/framelocks because of its spring-quality that doesn't require HT to achieve. It's light and trick and all that too, which is a big plus.

One of the things Ti doesn't like is friction--such as moving lockback parts rubbing directly on the Ti liners. It'll gall, stick and it's high COF makes for rough action. This can be overcome with bushings and spacers that would then be the primary friction surfaces. That's extra trouble and cost and it would be hard to get that super-close fit between lockbar and liners we're used to in that genre, but it could be done.

Meanwhile, The linerlock/framelock design doesn't present such friction opportunities ... The detent ball rides on the blade until engaged (steel-on-steel), there are always some sort of bushings between blade and liner (steel-on-teflon, bronze, or whatever) ... The only direct friction is the lockface, the action of which might actually benefit from the higher-friction characteristics of Ti, though suffer from the material's inherent softness compared with, say, steel.
This is why careful attention is payed to engagement geometry on quality knives.