I know the Tikka Stainless I have obviously has a stainless barrel and action but what about the internals. The parts not so easy to wipe down when they get wet or condensate? I know SAKO advertises the fact that all of their internals are made of stainless steel int their stainless steel models but I read a post at huntamerica a while back where a guy had broken down his tikka stainless to clean it after a winter of hunting in the wet canadian wilderness and was suprised that that the internals had some rust and were not made of stainless. I have wondered about that since i got this gun and I have never broken the gun down to check. I am not good at taking things apart and putting them back together, a piece is always missing or is not used! SO are Tikka "All-Weather's" truly all-weather? If not, how should i weather proof them? Spray them with a light mist of shooters choice rust prevent?
"Stainless steel" consists of many types of alloys, and most are not "rust proof", but "rust resistant". Decent kitchen cultery (forks, knives, etc.) are virtually rust proof; but the strength of the alloy used is low (think how easy it is to bend a form or spoon). Guns require much more tensile strength and the alloys tend to be only "rust resistant". Try one of the stainless steel blackpowder arms and shoot it with real black powder. If you don't clean it within a reasonable amout of time, it will be covered in rust. The element titanium is 60% the weight of aluminum, but has the tensile strength of most steels. It is used in a variety of alloys and most, if not all of them, are totally rust proof in the normal world. That said: it is EXPENSIVE, HARD to machine and because of its "springiness" very difficult to cut rifling in. McMillin (the stock and custom rifle maker) made an entirely titanium rifle about 7 years ago. However, it cost about $3500 and never attained a very good reputation for accuracy. Now they only offer the action in tittanium, with stainless barrel, and still charge this price. Remington also offers one rifle with a titanium receiver, and it goes for approximately $1200 and weighs about 5 1/2 lbs. Taurus makes pistol frames and cylinders of it(but the actual barrels are rifled inserts made of "stainless steel". S&W is using it for pistol cylinders, but alumium/scandium (lighter, but not as strong) alloy for the frames. I really hope that more parts in the future will be made of titanium, but one limiting factor is that they can only be hardened to approximately Rockell 41 (on the C-scale). This makes knifeblades out of the question (a decent knife is 57-61). However this allows most firearm parts to be constructed of titanium. Sadly, we have to import all of it. Russia and South Africa are the sources (that's why russian subs could outdive ours by 1000 feet and their migs were faster, in part because they were lighter; they were made using titanium for every possible part).
