Steel's strength varies by orders of magnitude depending on the alloy and heat treatment. It's an incredibly flexible family of materials. Some members of that family are far stronger than anything in the titanium family, e.g. 4340 steel has a nominal yield strength of >1800 MPa, compared to <1300 MPa for Ti 10-2-3.
We're not talking about exotic and expensive varieties of steel though. We're just talking about "general" or common steel and comparing it to unalloyed "common"/"general" titanium. Remember, Steel is itself an alloy, Titanium is an element.
If you start comparing Titanium alloys to Steel then the comparison gets even harder. Titanium alloys are in general stronger than steel as well as much lighter and more corrosion resistant.
> We're not talking about exotic and expensive varieties of steel though.
4340 steel isn't exotic. It's one of the most commonly used grades of steel out there, and it's much cheaper than titanium. There are steels out there with significant stronger yield strengths too. Meanwhile the highest yield strength of any Ti alloy is <1300MPa.
Titanium is still a really great material in certain applications. But it's not magic. You have to use it intelligently in the right application to get a benefit from it.
The family of materials we call steel is so fantastic, it almost a shame it’s so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. If it were invented today the front page of HN would be loaded with stories of this miracle material.
Pure elemental titanium has much less desirable material properties than various titanium alloys which are what you encounter most commonly. It is very uncommon to encounter elemental titanium outside of a chemistry lab.
I have some titanium crafting wire. Should be easy to find on Amazon or similar. It's a little surreal - looks similar to a roll of steel wire, but feels as lightweight as PLA. Basically the real-world version of mithril.
The carbon content of mild steel is low but not insignificant. Pure wrought iron [0] is a dream to forge and it has a huge grain structure. It's more ductile than mild steel but it's also not as hardenable or tough as mild steel [1]. That little bit of carbon in mild steel makes a big difference.
[0] I mean real wrought iron -- the almost 100% elemental stuff -- like the Eiffel tower is made of. This is practically unobtainable today. The "wrought iron" you commonly see for sale nowadays is always mild steel. And "cast iron" is actually very high carbon steel, not iron. Cast iron so high in carbon that it's brittle and cannot be forged or easily welded.
[1] It's a myth that mild steel cannot be hardened. With a proper wetting agent added to the quench, you can harden it significantly.
Wrought iron and mild steel are more or less functionally equivalent. One other reason why cast iron is so brittle is because it contains quite a bit of silicon.
The alloy composition calls for 0.2-0.3% molybdenum and expects accuracy to within a few per mille for ten elements. Moly is considered so important that there are entire towns in the United States established to mine it to secure the military supply chain.
Is this true? From the Wikipedia article, the two mines that produce molybdenum as the main product are the two in CO, Henderson and Climax. They have no towns associated with them. Climax is near Leadville, but Leadville existed as a mining town before molybdenum was being mined at any scale. The other mine isn't close to any town that has more than a trailer park of people.
The others mine molybdenum as a byproduct of copper. I guess you could say the Bagdad mine has a company town, but it wasn't made to secure the military supply chain 140 year ago.
There are definitely steels that lose out to grade 5 Titanium. There are also steels that beat all Titanium grades. It's not so simple to say steel is stronger then Titanium. Some steels are stronger then titanium. Some Titanium grades are stronger then Some steels.
