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Comment by 303uru | Hacker News Reader

Love titanium, something so cool about it. It’s like steel with no downsides. I’ve got 5 ti bikes and a few ti watches, one of my favorite pieces though is my snow peak double wall titanium mug.

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Do your bikes have carbon forks or TI? when I looked at TI bikes for fun in the past, the carbon forks surprised me, seemed like that should have been titanium too. How has your mug held up? Has it been compatibly durable compared to steel vacuum mugs? Snow peak makes great products but leans more lightweight than durable from my experience with their dishware

Titanium needs to be in a bigger tube with thinner walls to take advantage of the properties compared to steel - the very first titanium bicycles used the available surplus tubing from defense/aeronautics industry that was close to steel bicycle tubing size and were notably not great until they used slightly bigger tubing and better titanium alloys. Forks have a couple of design features that make it hard to work with titanium tubing, the height from bottom of headtube to where the top of the tire is has to have extra space for clearance or a tiny object or some mud will clog up the fork pretty quickly or cause an immediate stop in front wheel rotation, and that part of the fork has to be extremely stiff. Some of of the first carbon forks had a titanium steerer tube for a minimal weight saving and to make it easier to work with the stem attachment system. Several equipment changes to this part of the bicycle have come about in the last couple of decades to accommodate carbon fiber more easily. The market for titanium was just too niche by comparison to make those changes necessary.

This is super cool, I didn't realize the reason would be so complex. Thanks for explaining!

It's been done but the cost is very high compared to other materials because of the amount of specialized labor and only boutique builders offer one, the legs are really fat so it has poor aerodynamics so it's only suitable for off-road as a drop in replacement for a bicycle frame built for a suspension fork to account for the crown to tire distance and almost everyone has switched to suspension off-road. I've ridden some of the cheaper titanium forks and they flexed so much I did not feel comfortable riding them but have heard even the expensive ones flex quite a bit.

You seem like you'd know the answer to this question: why do so many aluminum bicycles have carbon-fiber forks?

I do not, I just have owned a lot of titanium frames and parts over the years and just read obsessively about the subject. :)

One does actually (https://bearclawbicycleco.com/titanium-gravel-fork/). Mug looks practically brand new several years later.

Finally a titanium stan thread! Due to skin allergies/sensitivities, the only material I can wear for watches seems to be titanium. Luckily the market for them are mostly all stylish and functional. And they're so light! It's like I'm wearing another piece of clothing on my wrist that's cold and tells me the time.

Snow Peak's titanium spork is awesome as well. I got two and use one for my regular meals and the other I EDC in a cargo pocket for use away from home.

What makes the mug particularly good? Always interested in something to improve coffee and recently broke my favourite one.

I've got a Ti double-walled mug from Snow Peak that I use a lot around the house. The big strengths are light weight, near indestructability, and a cool Ti functional aesthetic. It's double-walled and holds heat well, but I prefer the "mouth feel" of ceramic or glass when drinking coffee, so I don't use it much for coffee.

I've got one myself. For only a bit more weight (~70g) than single-walled aluminum mug (~60g), Snow Peak can put two walls, making the mug insulated.

Though it's heavier than an insulated plastic mug, and _way_ more expensive.

It’s super light, about the same weight as single wall stainless cup. The mouthfeel is nice, hot coffee doesn’t make the titanium feel as hot as steel gets and the feel is more similar to ceramic than stainless steel. It cleans up really nice and truly doesn’t stain. I even used a dc transformer to do some custom anodizing on mine and it looks really cool.

Lightweight for camping. I have a titanium flask that was engraved by a guy on YouTube.

Tea, especially green tea, in a titanium mug is, in my experience, utterly gross.

Maybe anodized titanium would work better? I don’t know what the chemistry behind the problem is, but even stainless steel kills green tea after a while.

Titanium is not good for flavor, its good for strength to weight ratio for people concerned with weight (think EDC, ultralight, etc)

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