Titanium is either alpha as in 6Al4V
Beta such as the Beta C used by Mission which from what I can remember is not the 19/20 grade suggested above
and Alpha Beta don't have a reference
Anyhow the Beta C is ti alloy, I have ran across what I think it is on matweb.com which is an engineering materials web site, I found some titanium alloys that exceed the 210,000 than someone else referenced earlier.
The rockwell C of 6Al4V or Grade 5 according to matweb is 36
For Ti 6Al4V STA according to mat web is 41, I have tried to get some makers to make some handles out of this as most Titanium handles are made of Grade 5 as are most titanium parts. Zip, the couple of makers I talked to which are here on this forum and respected, didn't know what I was talking about. I sent them the mat web specs and all I got was yea if you can find me some I'll try and use it.
I have reams of file folders full of titanium alloy research as I was trying to figure out what Mission Actually uses because I wanted to have somone make me some knives out of it, but all John every said was Beta C. Anyway the best I can tell is that Mission uses
Titanium Beta C (Ti-3Al-8V-6Cr-4Mo-4Zr; Timetal 3-8-6-44; Ti-38-6-44; UNS R58640
Matweb says it has a ultimate tensile strength of 218,000 psi, John had always maintained that Missions Beta C had an uts of 225,000 psi, but I can't find any info on any beta c titanium that comes in over 218,000 psi.
Anyway go to matweb the online materials database and search around you will find lots of data there and not just for titanium.
I've also got lots of good information from
www.accromet.com,
www.RMITitanium.com (download and print the titanium alloy guide it is loaded with good data,
www.epict.com/why_titanium some cool stuff,
www.swordforum.com/metallurgy/titanium.html,
www.rembar.com/Titanium.htm
That should get you started and when you want some more email directly. Like I said man i've got more hours logged on this stuff than some engineers. Titanium fascinates me and the Beta C is the real deal. I've owned 5 mission knives gave them up due to quality control issues which by the way are still raging despite the new owner. Everyone on here knows I"m a Mission fan but the stuff their turning out now is low end crap, Stay Away.
Gator, one last thing. Commercially pure titanium is not a good material for knife making that is why all of the blades made with titanium are actually made of titanium alloy, they just say titanium for convenience. So what your looking for is without question a titanium alloy of some sort you just don't know which one yet. John, always claimed that his blades actually got to between 45-47 on Rockwell C, after having used them extensively for years I'd say that seems pretty close. I always compared performance of the Beta C blades to AUS 8 that had been properly heat treated. I've also heard with the exception of on special batch run of some Titanium alloy that was made long ago for the SR71 black bird project that apparently got a special heat treat and was able to attain RC of 50. Allegedly John had bought the last remaining ingots of the stuff before he died from an engineer buddy of his, don't know if it is true but I have reason to believe it is. Anyway beyond about 45 to 47 most titanium alloys get real brittle almost like ceramic which isn't very good for a knife as it is really prone to chipping, cracking, breaking, well you get the point. The SR71 stuff was some kinda special deal that was very expensive to process.
Hope this helps.
