heat treat ti

[dcfolders]

I just read on another post, about heat treating ti on a liner lock face. Is this needed. I thought ti already at it's most hardness . I have use'd ti on about 2 dozen liner locks. And have not had any problems. I started useing ti because you can just bend it no heat. Do I need to change I do this
thanks
Darryl Cota

[Frank Niro]

Depends who you want to listen to .
What is being sid is that just the front edge of the lock should be heat treated. I've had very hard use folder I carried for several years and even put a second blade into it. I did not have problems with it locking, unlocking or wearing. I'm not about to start hardening now. Frank

[zerogee]

As far as treating the titanium lock face, about the only thing I've heard of that makes sense to my simple mind is using a carbidizer - basically depositing a thin coating of tungsten carbide to the lock face (with the right electrodes, I understand that it can also be set up to create a layer of titanium carbide). However, I've never actually tried this myself, so YMMV.

[Don Robinson]

What Frank Niro said.

[Ray Rogers]

Is heat treating the lock face needed? No. Are bushings, damascus blades, or gold plated screws needed? No.

Although I've never heat treated the lock face on any of the hundreds of liner locks I've made I can still imagine that heat treating the lock face may impart some useful characteristics. Since I've never been able to wear out a titanium lock my guess would be that any improvement in wear resistance would be superfluous . But, heat treating might change the frictional character of the lock face and result in a less sticky lock with a smoother action. In other words, heat treating the lock face is just another step like using bushings or high performance steels that a maker can take in an effort to squeeze the last bit of performance out of his knives ...

[Ed Caffrey]

Most Ti is not "heat treatable" in the way that most of us know heat treating. What they are talking about is repeatedly heating and cooling the lock face, which builds up a super thin coating of titanium oxide. That oxide is considerably harder than the Ti.

I'm with the others...I've been using Ti for liners for years, and if you have the angles, etc. correct, I've never seen a need for anything on the lock faces of Ti liners.

I will admit that I have thought about one of those carborizers.....if it works, it would have applications in the knife shop....but the price to usefulness ratio has kept me from buying one.

[David Broadwell]

I discussed this with Chris Reeve years ago and have been treating my lock faces in this manner. When you heat the 6-4 titanium to cherry red with a propane torch, you are creating a layer of alpha particles, or oxides. You want to remove that oxide from everywhere but the lock face or it could lead to cracking of the material down the road. As Ed noted, those oxides are harder than the titanium itself. (Titanium itself isn't all that hard. Those, myself included, who have used O-1 or 15n20 for liners have gotten them much harder than 6-4 titanium will ever get, and will likely outlast the titanium unless they rust badly.) That's the info from Chris, who stated then that he'd learned it from a metallurgist. Whether or not it wears better than the straight titanium is something I don't know for sure. What I've seen from it is a smoother action. There is less stickiness to the lock. Other than that it may be more of a gimmick than anything else, but it takes less than a minute to do so I keep on doing it.

David