Spyderco Forums

How do they compare?

Has spyderco made any knives in ti??

H1 will have much better wear resistance. Ti is much softer than steel, and usually when knives are made out of it the edge is carbidized to make it harder. But this also means you can't sharpen it unless you have a way of carbidizing it yourself. Un-carbidized titanium can't hold an edge very well at all. I would much prefer H1.

You can sharpen carbidized titanium with regular benchstones, as it is done usually on one side so you just sharpen the other one. The thing you need to be careful of is that you can not use standard techniques like burr-sharpening because if you do you will defeat the carbidizing purpose completely.

There are many forms of Titanium used in knives, in general :

-they tend to be fairly soft, ~45 HRC and thus can dent/roll easier
-they are very impact tough
-they are fairly weak and easy to bend (and thus usually have thick cross sections)

In general unless you need some of the special properties of Titanium (it is very light for example) it is hard to argue why you would want it in a knife. Even for what it does there are better solutions. For example if you want a lightweight knife you can use G10 with a steel inlay-edge.

I have a friend who works in EOD and has a Ti knife for that. He carries a standard stainless knife in addition, and really only uses the Ti as a specialized work too.

What advantages are you hoping for from the Titanium blade?

Plenty of Spyderco knives in Ti. Since they know what they're doing, they invariably use it for handles.

My titanium bladed knives have bugger-all edge retention. Can't get them as sharp as steel, for some reason. Maybe they just roll or fold when I get out to the extremes of sharpness.

There are a number of rust-proof steels that are unsuitable for performance blades. H1 is an anomaly. I would rather see a bronze bladed folder than a Ti one.

Blerv wrote:There are a number of rust-proof steels that are unsuitable for performance blades. H1 is an anomaly. I would rather see a bronze bladed folder than a Ti one.

Explain why these are unsuitable for blades? Is it that they lack good edge holding capacity?

SpyderEdgeForever wrote:Explain why these are unsuitable for blades? Is it that they lack good edge holding capacity?

I don't know enough about knife making with titanium to comprehensively answer. I do know some makers experiment with titanium carbides.

As for a titanium alloy (mostly titanium) my understanding is the cost to work with it, the ability to take a keen edge, and the ability to hold that edge is marginal. Think 420 with the temperament of Lindsey Lohan. It's decent for dive knives, especially ones that can't be magnetic, but for everything else the lack of custom and production knives leads me to believe it's another ceramic-like material. More talk than walk.

Titanium is light, tough, and nonmagnetic (that last property is one of the primary reasons it is desirable in EOD, as mines both on land and in the water often use magnetic triggers for anti-vehicular purposes).

They say beta titanium can actually be heat treated to somewhere in the mid 50s. As far as i know only one manufacturer uses it and they're still up and coming. H1 is hard to beat though. Especially serrated. I just purchased a Dragonfly salt for my beach knife. I have some titanium credit card knives and they do get very sharp but the edge will bend with any kind of impact. Of course they are thin and chisel ground. I wouldn't mind trying some beta ti but haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe spyderco can do a mule in it. It would make for some interesting testing.

http://www.spyderco.com/forums/showthre ... nium-knife. The search function is your friend

Titanium is not good for the edge retention, I have only seen one titanium dive knife blunt tip chisel grind. I also think H1 is superior.