Has any one ever thought about having a titanium lock bar made for a lock back knife. This occurred to me after receiving a used delica 4 that had the lockbar damaged. It looked like it had possibly happed by spinewhacking and severly weakened the locking mechanism. Would a titanium lock bar keep this from happening? Has anyone ever had one made? Just a thought.
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titanium lock bar for delica 4
- Thread starter Scott.123
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Titanium's advantage over steel is that it's stronger, ounce for ounce, but steel's stronger, inch for inch.
However, if you're talking about a part that's a set size (like the lockbar on a delica) then making that part out of steel will be stronger than the exact same part in titanium. Of course, the steel bit will be heavier, but I doubt that concerns you.
However, if you're talking about a part that's a set size (like the lockbar on a delica) then making that part out of steel will be stronger than the exact same part in titanium. Of course, the steel bit will be heavier, but I doubt that concerns you.
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Titanium is certainly strong enough to work for this but due to its galling (sticking) characteristic it would always be a very gritty and bad feeling roll out for the blade. Without teflon, nylatron, or PB washers in the pivot separating the blade from rubbing on the titanium we would not even be able to tolerate much use of ti in the market I don't think.
One of its strong points is its strength to weight ratio but it is softer than steel, and it would likely wear quicker as a result rounding off the edges of contact and other things like this.
I'd not recommend it. I once thought of it also but its not really feesible would be my answer.
STR
One of its strong points is its strength to weight ratio but it is softer than steel, and it would likely wear quicker as a result rounding off the edges of contact and other things like this.
I'd not recommend it. I once thought of it also but its not really feesible would be my answer.
STR
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STR, I have a question about the wear resistance of ti, as I have read your post above. I pulled the following information directly from Mission Knives web site. Am I misreading your post or am I misinterprating the info on Mission Knivees web site. Further if you would like additonal info I have some emails from John himself before he passed, God rest his soul. Wherein he claims that some titaniums have wear restiance to 8 times that of steel.
Please clarify.
4. Wear/Abrasion Resistance - The ability of the metal to resist being eroded by contact with outside materials such as dirt, sand, ice, mud, nylon webbing, rope, etc. Because titanium is self-healing with its own titanium oxide ceramic skin, it is far more abrasion resistant than steel.
TimesWear Resistance
Ti - CP 1
Ti - 6Al-4V 3
Ti - Beta 5
High Carbon Steel 2
Ceramic 10
Note 1 - Ceramic is highly notch sensitive and has little to no bending strength
Note 2 - Bigger numbers are better.
Note 3 - The higher the number, the harder the material
RC - Rockwell C Scale
MOH hardness scale; Diamond=10, Sapphire = 9
Sorry I can't get the chart right, it appears fine when I paste it and then when I post it comes out all messed up. the wear resitance numbers are last number of each line, the first is 1, the second is 3, the third is 5, the fourth is 2 and the fifth is ten. Both 6AL4V and Beta C Ti appear on this chart to have greater wear resitance than the high carbon steel tested. I am not trying to start any trouble I just am trying to educate myself about knife and blade materials.
Thanks in advance
Please clarify.
4. Wear/Abrasion Resistance - The ability of the metal to resist being eroded by contact with outside materials such as dirt, sand, ice, mud, nylon webbing, rope, etc. Because titanium is self-healing with its own titanium oxide ceramic skin, it is far more abrasion resistant than steel.
TimesWear Resistance
Ti - CP 1
Ti - 6Al-4V 3
Ti - Beta 5
High Carbon Steel 2
Ceramic 10
Note 1 - Ceramic is highly notch sensitive and has little to no bending strength
Note 2 - Bigger numbers are better.
Note 3 - The higher the number, the harder the material
RC - Rockwell C Scale
MOH hardness scale; Diamond=10, Sapphire = 9
Sorry I can't get the chart right, it appears fine when I paste it and then when I post it comes out all messed up. the wear resitance numbers are last number of each line, the first is 1, the second is 3, the third is 5, the fourth is 2 and the fifth is ten. Both 6AL4V and Beta C Ti appear on this chart to have greater wear resitance than the high carbon steel tested. I am not trying to start any trouble I just am trying to educate myself about knife and blade materials.
Thanks in advance
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Very good question and certainly worth more elaboration on. Thank you. John is correct of course. Its my use or term used here that is at fault I think; as I did not convey what I mean very well. What I mean is that perhaps wear is not the right word I need to use but instead maybe hardness or perhaps impact resistance more specifically so, lets look at things from the stand point of impact resistance of a harder steel vs wear resistance from like grinding or abrasion.
Typically hardened stainless steel liner and frame locks wear less and indent less than even greater thickness titanium ones and I have seen this on many many occasions. Spine whacking proves this out in no time flat. Taking any piece of hardened steel and smacking it into a piece of titanium can prove it out also. You can also see this by using the titanium to slap the steel and compare which suffers greater indenting. Now this is probably closer to having to do with the hardness also but its what I see regardless of the proper term used. For example, I can easily stamp titanium with my STR signiture using my custom made punch with my three initials and even after heating it up to harden it some or after anodizing it. Trying that in even 45 RockWell hardness 410 stainless is much much harder to do and harder on my punch also which can cause it to thicken and even roll the nice edges it has on it to make the intials show up in the first place. My hardened punch will stamp the 45 RC steel but lets just say I did it once and will not do it anymore. I spent too much getting that punch to risk wearing it out as fast as that would wear it down.
Where titanium excels over steel for folding knives is in the way it sticks to dissimilar metals and itself which is a distinct advantage for it to be utilized in the construction of a liner or frame locking folder and I'm sure to some it even kind of makes up for some lack of tolerance or consistancy in their contact angles where stainless forces them to get that angle and contact just right.
The added advantages to titanium of lighter weight, extreme corrosion resistance, non magnetic signiture and color anodizing, not to forget not having to heat treat it for most applications outside of blades all combine to make it that much more desireable for mass appeal to various tastes, ease of carry and use and for applications in both marine and salt water uses for knives and blades and even in certain applications with bomb and mine deactivation units such as in the Navy SEALs because its non magnetic and unaffected by salt water.
If you were to grind titanium to make a knife blade, or beta ti, or even off shoot alloys of titanium I agree fully that the wear resistance is high with titanium. I've made blades using it and its a bear with some types yes. Titanium in most grades that knifemakers use will not really harden to a decent level for an edge and you will see edge rolling and other things like this associated with a softer steel which is why people put a coating on the edge of ti blades often times using various proprietary measures or carbide coatings to give the cutting part of the blade a distinct advantage and better edge keeping. For diving knives, cutting rope, and other softer materials a titanium blade works quite well though. For a chopper? Don't think so. Even anodized its not really going to prevent it from indenting on corners and edges. Its been said by many that the oxide layer formed from anodizing is near ceramic in hardness. Not sure about this because it doesn't really seem to be all that scratch resistant to me and it certainly doesn't seem to increase the ability of the titanium from indenting inward from harder materials.
STR
Typically hardened stainless steel liner and frame locks wear less and indent less than even greater thickness titanium ones and I have seen this on many many occasions. Spine whacking proves this out in no time flat. Taking any piece of hardened steel and smacking it into a piece of titanium can prove it out also. You can also see this by using the titanium to slap the steel and compare which suffers greater indenting. Now this is probably closer to having to do with the hardness also but its what I see regardless of the proper term used. For example, I can easily stamp titanium with my STR signiture using my custom made punch with my three initials and even after heating it up to harden it some or after anodizing it. Trying that in even 45 RockWell hardness 410 stainless is much much harder to do and harder on my punch also which can cause it to thicken and even roll the nice edges it has on it to make the intials show up in the first place. My hardened punch will stamp the 45 RC steel but lets just say I did it once and will not do it anymore. I spent too much getting that punch to risk wearing it out as fast as that would wear it down.
Where titanium excels over steel for folding knives is in the way it sticks to dissimilar metals and itself which is a distinct advantage for it to be utilized in the construction of a liner or frame locking folder and I'm sure to some it even kind of makes up for some lack of tolerance or consistancy in their contact angles where stainless forces them to get that angle and contact just right.
The added advantages to titanium of lighter weight, extreme corrosion resistance, non magnetic signiture and color anodizing, not to forget not having to heat treat it for most applications outside of blades all combine to make it that much more desireable for mass appeal to various tastes, ease of carry and use and for applications in both marine and salt water uses for knives and blades and even in certain applications with bomb and mine deactivation units such as in the Navy SEALs because its non magnetic and unaffected by salt water.
If you were to grind titanium to make a knife blade, or beta ti, or even off shoot alloys of titanium I agree fully that the wear resistance is high with titanium. I've made blades using it and its a bear with some types yes. Titanium in most grades that knifemakers use will not really harden to a decent level for an edge and you will see edge rolling and other things like this associated with a softer steel which is why people put a coating on the edge of ti blades often times using various proprietary measures or carbide coatings to give the cutting part of the blade a distinct advantage and better edge keeping. For diving knives, cutting rope, and other softer materials a titanium blade works quite well though. For a chopper? Don't think so. Even anodized its not really going to prevent it from indenting on corners and edges. Its been said by many that the oxide layer formed from anodizing is near ceramic in hardness. Not sure about this because it doesn't really seem to be all that scratch resistant to me and it certainly doesn't seem to increase the ability of the titanium from indenting inward from harder materials.
STR
Excellent discourse, STR, as always!
Maybe I can add what little I know about the oxide layer: The oxide layer on Ti is, in principle, air tight. Meaning, once it is formed, it keeps the Ti underneath from oxidizing as not oxygen can get to it. The same is true for aluminum. In practice, however, it takes a controlled process like anodization to get a truely tight oxygen cover. Again, the same with aluminum. The big difference between the two is that Al corrodes far more aggressively and holes in the oxygen cover will show up rather quickly. This means, that the oxide layer is very, very thin, unless you help it along (anodization), in principle no more than a few atomic layers. The oxide layer is indeed very hard. Not as hard as AlO (which is essentially saphire), but up the. However, the film is way to thin to offer any resistance against impact. Any impact will punch right through the layer as if it wasn't there. The oxide layers that you get with anodization are many times as thick, but many times the thickness of a few atomic layers is still not much (a whole lot less than paper thin). So they offer much more protection, but nothing that would make any difference to impact.
Maybe I can add what little I know about the oxide layer: The oxide layer on Ti is, in principle, air tight. Meaning, once it is formed, it keeps the Ti underneath from oxidizing as not oxygen can get to it. The same is true for aluminum. In practice, however, it takes a controlled process like anodization to get a truely tight oxygen cover. Again, the same with aluminum. The big difference between the two is that Al corrodes far more aggressively and holes in the oxygen cover will show up rather quickly. This means, that the oxide layer is very, very thin, unless you help it along (anodization), in principle no more than a few atomic layers. The oxide layer is indeed very hard. Not as hard as AlO (which is essentially saphire), but up the. However, the film is way to thin to offer any resistance against impact. Any impact will punch right through the layer as if it wasn't there. The oxide layers that you get with anodization are many times as thick, but many times the thickness of a few atomic layers is still not much (a whole lot less than paper thin). So they offer much more protection, but nothing that would make any difference to impact.
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great thread, thanks for the info guys :thumbup:
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STR, and HoB, thanks for the info, very informative. I have to agree with the softness you ref. STR. The ti does indent easier than steel, but I think that is a straight hardness issue, I also think that the hardness issue would cause the problems you mentioned about the frame lock wearing, I dont think it's acutally wearing but I think the pressure on the frame lock surface where it contacts with the back of the blade just gets pushed in from the pressure of opening, closing and using. What I mean to get specefic is that if you were to take the blade and weigh it, it would weigh what it did when it was originally assembled to the handle, and vice versa by weighing the handle. If the weight of the component parts is the same after heavy or prolonged periods of use no material has been lossed (which equates to no wear), what has really happened is that some component parts have changed shape and the dimensions are no longer the same as the original despite the fact the component parts are still comprised of the original amount of material. The dimensions of the parts are just slightly distorted through heavy or prolonged periods of use due to their softness.
Is that more on track?
Is that more on track?