Mine isn't worn out yet, but the titanium will give it a heck of a lot more life, I'll tell you that for sure. Some have a hardend steel inserts in the face instead. Either one is a requirement on an aluminum aloy reciever in my opinion. Wouldn't consider a gun without them!

BP

 

A few years ago I did a lot of shooting (and I mean a lot) with a pair of Beretta Ultralights with aluminum receivers and titanium inserts. I had them serviced by Rich Cole, and he told me a little about them.

He said he had never seen an Ultralight that had been shot as much as mine. I used mine for sporting clays, and most of them are used for hunting.

The place where wear occurs on any Beretta 68x O/U is on the holes that the locking lugs fit into. That is steel. However, they wear faster on a gun with an Al receiver because the receiver flexes a little with every shot, allowing movement between the lugs and the holes, which causes wear.

He said that any O/U with an aluminum receiver would wear that way due to the flexible receiver. We talked about a B. Rizzini with an Al receiver (I think it was Aurum Light but I'm not sure) and he said it would have the same problem of faster locking lug wear than a steel receiver would have.

That accelerated wear would not be a problem for a hunter. I was shooting my guns more in a year (20,000 shells) than a hunter does in a lifetime. And of course, the wear is repairable.

 

I actually am an engineer with Alcoa (a really big aluminum company) and do get involved with testing for new applications from time to time. IMO there is no reason to believe that a high strength aluminum alloy with heat treating such as 7075-T6 (the alloy and temper we usually sell to firearms manufacturers) will wear any faster than most stainless steel or titanium alloys.

As an example, 7075-T6 has a Ultimate tensile strength of 87,000 psi and a yield of 66,700 psi with a Rockwell B hardness rating of 87. Only of few of the highest strength stainless and titanium alloys exceed those levels so it really comes down to the firearms manufacturer as to the design, manufacturing process and materials used in the firearms that will determine the longevity of a gun. Even the highest strength steel alloys can fail if poorly processed.

If you think of it, there still are quite a few DC3s flying after almost 70 years of service and they are almost all aluminum.

 

I'm sure Adriondak is correct, but I'd bet considering the manufacturing process involved to get that hardness and strength of Aluminum into a gun frame it is more costly than to put in an insert. Besides which I bet it would be difficult to get John Q. Public to believe it and buy it. Which after all is the goal there!
I have one gun with an aluminum frame, well actualy several, but only one break action. I'm not likely to buy any more but it has nothing whatever to do with strength or wear, I want the extra weight afforded by the steel. The weight reduction is a big plus with my Franchi Veloce as well as my Beretta Urika. But for Skeet, Trap, and Sporting Clays guns, I'll not be buying aluminum aloy reciever guns.

BP

 

Burt Powder,

For clay games guns I agree. For many hunting situations I really like a light gun in cases where the gun is carried a lot and shot relatively few times when compared to the 100, 200, 400 shot matches seen in Trap, SC, Skeet.

I'd would love to have a Citori Featherweight, Titaniam/Al receiver on a 20--nearly bought one at Gander, but the comb of the stock was so abused by folks looking at and re-racking that the price ~3K and Gander's inflexibility in pricing to the condition of the gun killed the urge.

A light gun and adequate, well patterning loads is the way to go in upland game hunting. I kinda like this one:

http://www.browning.com/products/catalog/firearms/detail.asp?value=008B&cat_id=013&type_id=055

 

One aspect where high strength Aluminum falls well short of steel is galling and gouging. Anodizing (and other surface preps) helps a lot, but get thru that ultra thin layer and the underlying metal is as soft as butter while still maintaining a high tensile strength.

A buddy had a 12g XS feather. Nice gun with great looking wood. Every time he opened it up you could see a huge gouge in the breechface just beside the steel insert. I guess he damaged it during assembly at some point. Apparently Browning doesn't catalog them any more and my buddy sold it to a guy who had a receiver stretch problem with his own XS feather and just had to have another feather. Buddy sold it for more than he had in it.

Maybe I'm old school, but I still believe that good firearms are made from steel.

When trying to decide between aluminum and plastic.......choose steel!