doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Why are there no titanium barreled sxs's?

Terry can i get some info on Ken Genneco? Are these insert tubes pernament or drop in? Can he do a 16ga. to 20ga.?

His tubes are drop in, like the old Purbaugh. Spelling below is correct.

K. Genecco Gun Works,
10512 Lower Sacramento Rd.,
Stockton, CA 95210

e-mail: double-special@comcast.net

Phone (209) 951-0706 He does not answer until after 12:30 (he is on his machines all morning)

I'm with Jim on the looks of the Model 21 titanium. I don't care for it that much, either. I am more of a blue type guy I guess.

Over 100 years ago the British gunmakers established (I don't know how ) that the ideal weight for a shotgun was 96 X the weight of the shotload it fired, e.g. a 12 bore firing a 1oz payload should weigh 96 ozs or 6lbs. This rule of thumb is still good today. Where would a shotgun with titanium barrels balance ??

So, the answer to the question is: Although Ti barrels can be made with the metal technology and manufacturing technology today, there doesn't seem to be an obvious business case for the rather expensive undertaking.

As Tinker and others have pointed out, there are challenges. Most of these challenges have been overcome but at additional cost as well. Putting a long smooth hole in a piece of Ti is no easy job and therefore no cheap job. I have a 5' long 3" dia piece of 6Al4V Ti with a gundrilled hole and honed to a 63 rms finish, .070 wall, that I found in a local scrap yard 20 yrs ago. This piece is from some aerospace project gone belly up. I'll bet it cost thousands to make that part. I had planned on making another extreme pressure/large water rocket with it, but lost enthusiasm after we successfully made a steel one. I may get back to it for the entertainment.

To your question, Mike, a gun could be balanced with Ti barrels in a number of ways. The most obvious application to me would be in the extremely long barrel o/u target gun market that seem bent on making the longest barrels. A set of barrels could be made to some very long lengths and still have dynamics of a shorter barreled gun. This could give the 'advantage' of a long sight radius with the quickness of a shorter barrel. We might see it yet on a PGUN 38" or 40" barrel set.

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

Jimmy-

If it were just to come down to surface finish and color, you could get a titanium gun frame, barrel, or any other part to 'appear' just as browned, blacked, or blued steel. You could even do 'fake damascus' pattern! Using the right electrochemical process, you can get almost any color on titanium you desire. It's pretty cool in that regard.
It's possible to get the same surface textures, including the engraving. It just takes process specific to the material.


--Tinker

The Bretton had French proofed, aluminum barrels. You didn't need screw in chokes, as the barrels were screw in.

Geno, both the MIG 29 and the SR-71 used titanium in construction. Can't speak for the MIG, but, the "Blackbird" was one of the safest airframe and flight programs ever put to use-none were lost operationally, although several countries tried.

The South China sea has a fair amount of titanium littering it, from SR-71s that crashed after repair while in testing.
Best,
Ted

Ted-

I got a call at the shop one afternoon in '92 or '93
A couple of friends had gotten a shipment of sample Ti tubing from Eastern Europe.
A materials broker was offering a seductive offer on 'milsurp' tubing and stock.
They'd been joking around with the notion that 'that stuff could have been recycled from *some reactor or something*' when they got the idea to drag out the Rad Meter.

That material was Hot!

Since then I've steered clear of any cheap Chinese (or whatever) titanium products. Frankly, I have little personal use for titanium, and don't tend much to fancy exotic material for the sake of exotic anyway.



--Tinker

The "Rule of 96" is a rule of thumb - a very big, wide thumb, at that. Weight whould be what makes the shooter happiest or shoot best. Balance is the factor that determines how much weight goes into each hand. Moment of Inertia is the factor that sorts swing effort for given weight and balance. Since MOI is the summation of weight times radius (from CG) squared, long barrels and long stock have a disproportinate effect, especially if they have dense wood and thich barrel walls.