One of those, "I like the idea of it, but when you think about it it just seems unnecessary."
Titanium guns. A product of the 90s when the Soviet Union dissolved and Russian titanium commodity metal came online for the rest of the world.
You think, "lighter? that's a good idea, right?" Well, yes and no. You get diminishing returns with the added recoil associated with less mass. Plus the cost is higher than the composites now available.
I guess if you insist on lighter metals, the titanium would probably be more durable than a scandium or aluminum gun, but the few connoisseurs that insist on that, is that enough to justify the higher cost?
It didn't help the case for titanium that Taurus was the company that jumped on that bandwagon. Other unrelated quality issues would cast the material in an ill light.
I think these are reason that Ti was a flash in the pan. For all I know there were other issues. Like brittleness or somesuch. But cost is enough to kill anything.
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Titanium is light, and it is expensive.
But there are different types of material strength. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_of_materials
Titanium is able to hold together in applications that would cause aluminum to come apart. But titanium is susceptible to high temperatures, and it can be easily eroded by the temperatures and pressures generated by firing a bullet. The titanium cylinders of S&W revolvers have a special coating on them to enable them to withstand the heat and pressure. Because of that coating, extreme care must be taken when cleaning the titanium cylinder (no wire brushes, no abrasives). If the coating wears off, S&W must re-apply it. So a user must also monitor the integrity of the coating.
For many users, those restrictions make a titanium gun more trouble than it's worth.
Steel and aluminum are not as light as titanium, but they are more predictable/linear in their material performance.
Titanium allows certain parameters of gun design to be expanded. But there are always consequences to such radical changes.
I personally wouldn't buy a gun that used titanium in areas where it would require extra maintenance.
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