Titanium is a finicky mistress. You can machine it fairly well, but touch it with a file, stone, or sandpaper and it laughs at you-quite loudly at that. For most folks’ production facilities, you better get the exact dimensions, profiles, and surface finish you want before you pull the part off of the machine. Forget about hand work.
Ti galls worse than stainless and is more sensitive to lube. Not good in an action that has lots of moving parts and breaks in half after every couple of shots.
Ti is a fragile mistress. If you doubt it, read the warnings that come with a Smith & Wesson Ti handgun. The Ti cylinder must be cleaned with care or you will damage the surface coating S&W puts on them. Do that, and you have big problems, namely a very expensive and very worn out cylinder.
Be able to use any commonly available 12 gauge shell out there? Have you actually touched off a 1 ¼ oz. load in a 5# gun!?! I have tied myself to bulls and would sooner do that again than shoot a gun that light with Wally World shells. And that is the lower end of the 12 ga. loads. I don’t even want to think about touching off a high velocity 1 1/2oz load commonly used by MN pheasant hunters.
