Chuck -
On long barrels and light materials.
I think you likely already have thought about this since you wrote the above post, but I'll make this note for all.
Quite a bit of the 'quickness' in the swing of a shotgun has to do with air resistance.
Might be possible to make longer barrels at the same weight, whilst using Ti as the building material, but what we'd have there is bigger sails, and that wouldn't do well for the 'quickness' factor.
Another issue with Ti as a barrel material for all to consider is dynamics. I think this has been touched on in this thread already, but as someone who has extensive experience in the development, fabrication, testing, and field use of titanium as a building material, I'll point out that it handles completely differently than steel. For instance, 'crisp' is not an adjective I'd associate with titanium tubing.
From my nearly 20 years of experience with Ti, I wouldn't bother with it as a shotgun barrel material, based solely on the way titanium tubing handles.
--Tinker
