Titanium Watch Cases: Pros, Cons, Price, And Rarity
Why there are fewer titanium watches than you might think.
Titanium might be the closest we are ever going to get to a perfect material for watch cases. It’s 40% lighter than steel but twice as strong by weight; it is immune to the environmental chemicals, like chlorides and acids, which can cause pitting to develop in stainless steels. It’s almost totally corrosion resistant, in fact (one of the very few things that can corrode titanium is hydrofluoric acid). It won’t cause allergic skin reactions and although commercially pure titanium is easy to scratch, using harder alloys like Grade 5 titanium greatly reduces this problem, and surface hardening methods like Citizen’s Duratect methods, and Grand Seiko’s High Intensity and Brilliant Hard titanium approach the hardness and scratch resistance of hardened tool steels (and in some instances, exceed it).
So, titanium is lighter than steel, almost twice as strong by weight, virtually corrosion resistant, and though commercially pure titanium is soft (about as soft as some gold alloys) there are a number of ways to get around the problem.
Grade 2 And Grade 5 Titanium In Watch Cases
There are dozens of different grades of titanium available, but just two of them make up the vast majority of titanium watch cases. These are Grade 2 and Grade 5.
Grade 2 titanium is one of the so-called commercially pure grades, which are almost pure titanium. Grade 2 therefore has all the pros and cons typical of titanium overall. Since it’s almost pure titanium, it’s extremely corrosion resistant and is often the preferred grade for watch cases which are designed for certain types of salt water marine environments. It is also comparatively soft, and will tend to pick up scratches more easily than Grade 5. Bear in mind, though, that Grade 2 titanium is about as hard as 316L stainless steel (at 145-200 HV on the Vickers Hardness Scale, vs. 150 to 180 for 316L) so if the scratch resistance of 316L is ok for you, you won’t be disappointed with Grade 2 either. It’s also easier to machine than Grade 5 titanium.
Grade 5 titanium is an alloy, made of titanium, plus aluminum and vanadium. Its main advantages over Grade 2 are its strength, hardness, and ability to take a finish. You wouldn’t think it but those two extra metals give Grade 5 titanium a strength-to-weight ratio almost three times that of Grade 2, and with a hardness approaching or reaching 400 HV, it’s close to double the hardness of some stainless steels (bearing in mind that steel alloys can vary dramatically in hardness depending not just on composition, but also how the steel is worked) and it’s easier to bring to a high polish than Grade 2 as well. The downsides? It’s more expensive than Grade 2 titanium (currently, prices run roughly $13–$35 per kilogram for Grade 2; Grade 5 comes in at around $45–$100 per kilogram) and it’s more expensive to machine as well.
Titanium is also quite a bit harder to machine in general than stainless steel. It conducts heat poorly, which means it can feel pleasantly warm on the wrist, but it also means that it heats up fast when you cut it in a CNC machine and you have to be careful about cutting speed, and use a lot of lubricant. It also tends to gum up on the edges of cutting tools if you’re not careful and can rapidly dull them, and titanium dust and shavings can also ignite if overheated, or exposed to a spark.
Because it’s more challenging to machine than stainless steel, and more expensive, it’s not used as widely as you might think.
Titanium Watches: Relatively Rare
Major luxury brands usually use it as a specialty material, mostly for tool watches for obvious reasons, although there are exceptions. Rolex has a total of just two titanium watches (a Yachtmaster 42 model, and the Deep Sea Challenge, both in RLX Titanium, which is a proprietary Grade 5 alloy). Lange makes exactly one titanium watch – the titanium version of the Odysseus.
Patek Philippe has no titanium watches in its regular catalog at all, although it very, very occasionally will produce a titanium-cased unique piece. Vacheron does a few – eight, in its current catalog, but of those eight, seven are Overseas models with near-identical cases; three 42.5mm tourbillons, and four 41mm sports models (the other is the Métiers d’Art Tribute to the Quest of Time). At Audemars Piguet there are fifteen titanium watches total – however, of the fifteen, three are Concept watches, and one is the wild and wonderful Établisseurs Nomade.
You might think that volume producers of sports and utility watches would produce titanium watches by the score but that’s not always the case. Omega, for instance, has just ten in its current online catalog, and seven of those are Seamaster 300 variants (this is a good time to mention how much I miss the 1200M titanium version of the Ploprof). Tudor is also a bit of a surprise; while the company uses a wide range of materials, titanium is currently only used for Pelagos models (which are pretty much all titanium – interestingly enough, Grade 2 for cases but Grade 5 for casebacks, to take advantage of the extra rigidity). IWC does just 3 models in titanium (and seven in Ceratanium, which probably makes sense given the company’s investment in the material)
Breitling has a total of 43 titanium models – however, 32 of those are NFL collab watches, which are produced in limited editions of 104 pieces per team. Hamilton has perhaps four hundred or more models in its current catalog; of those, only fourteen are titanium (mostly Khaki Field mechanicals). Even brands like Grand Seiko and Citizen (the latter the maker of the first titanium watch in the world, the Chronometer X8, with which we went hands-on not long ago) don’t really do a volume business in titanium – Citizen’s way out front with 57 models on the current US site, but that’s out of four hundred or more models total, and that’s from the company that wrote the book on titanium watch cases. Grand Seiko has two models in Brilliant Hard Titanium and 28 in High Intensity Titanium. Even Casio doesn’t have a huge number of titanium-cased watches – the US site lists 72 watches, 38 of which are G-Shocks, and generally, the material is used for premium priced high-design watches, including a $9500 Frogman (which I wouldn’t mind having at all).
Now, titanium watches are not necessarily expensive – you can find them easily for less than five hundred bucks (sometimes a lot less) and they’e not necessarily super rare overall. And after all from a performance standpoint, it’s pretty tough to beat. So why are titanium watches so relatively rare from famous legacy luxury brands?
I think there are a few reasons. The first is that titanium is historically, a technical material rather than a luxury material. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s antithetical to luxury brand positioning – just ask Grand Seiko – but titanium doesn’t have an inherent aesthetic appeal (unless you are into matte surfaces and battleship grey) and making it visually beautiful in a way that competes with precious metals, glossy technical ceramics, or highly polished stainless steel takes some doing.
Stainless steel once had the same problem, but it began to be used as a luxury material all the way back in the Art Deco era and of course, became firmly established as a luxury material in the 1970s, so it has a long history of crossing over from the technical to the luxury space. Titanium, on the other hand has not been around nearly as long, and it’s never really been rehabilitated as a luxury material in a general sense, the way stainless steel was by (for instance) the Royal Oak.
And finally, one of its most appealing technical properties – its lightness – may actually tell against it as a luxury material, depending on what your tastes are. Titanium is so light that it runs the risk of feeling – irrationally or not – as if it’s simply not substantial enough for a luxury object. There’s an old saying that people want their kings to live in castles, and it’s possible that to some people titanium just doesn’t have the heft to feel like a luxury product.
However, there are some exceptions to this – Grand Seiko is one; higher end Citizen is another, and if you really want to see a company show the potential for titanium to really hit home runs as a luxury material, there’s De Bethune. Next, we’ll look at just how luxe titanium can get.