When I welded aluminum bicycle tubing, I just used a "standard" tig welder, with inert gas only at the arc.

That's very near here.

I did nuclear warhead maintenance in Vicenza, Italy.

Napa HS class of 66 .. I was on the SSBN 608. USN 66-69.

Yep. With Ti, you use TIG but flush the rear of the weld too. Usually you connect a hose up to the frame and keep flush out the area being welded with Argon. It needs good shielding flow on the top too. If not done properly, the weld will be brittle and crack, if not immediately, over time.

Small threaded fasteners often referred to as bolts by cycing enthusiasts are more commonly called screws in engineering and industrial settings. In searching the web, you'll likely have more luck searching on "titanium machine screws"

Titanium bolts are a decent replacement for steel ones. But they are expensive, so usually not the first thing you want to change when you want a bike that weight less. I recently did some bolt tuning, and made my bike about 100 grams lighter for about 150 $...
(Found some pretty good prices at Titanium Bolts) Titanium is stong, but i would not use it on a downhill bike it's more brittle than steel. But for all other bikes types it's a good replacement.. if you are willing to spend some money.

I live in a commercial Fishing port town now, Stainless steel hardware is pretty easy to Find.

Nice lighter.

I've been to a local frame builder's shop. His frame jig (I don't remember the brand) is set up to purge inside the tubing for Ti.
He only builds steel so he said he hasn't ever used it.

Toronto Cycles is one of the best source I've found for bicycle related Titanium bits and pieces.

Titanium Bolts, Titanium Fastener, Bike Parts Toronto, Bike Bolts

Some applications of TI bolts require different procedures then used with steel bolts. One example are tapered square crank arm retaining bolts. Every instruction I've seen for this is to install the arms with steel bolts, torque to what ever spec you see fit. Then replace the steel with the TI bolts and lightly torque them to not loosen. Then with each arm retightening the steel bolts are used again and the TIs are put back on after the service.

I'm building up a Colnago with some TI stuff for a friend and doing this and other TI specific methods. Andy.

I don't remember Ti crank fixing bolts but I do recall someone (FSA?) supplying aluminum alloy crank fixing bolts which were an even worse idea. They also were used to replace steel bolts only after the crank had been torqued to spec.

To the OP. I have used stainless bolts from my ACE Hardware store a few times on handlebar stems. I did some research at the time to find out the grade of SS that they use and it was fine for the application and probably (but can't say for sure) the same grade that they sell in all their stores. Never had any failures after tens of thousands of miles. The only thing to watch out for is that some stems require a non-standard smaller diameter head to fit in the stem grooves. If you go the local hardware route take one of the old bolts with you to compare head sizes. As mentioned, plenty of cheap Chinese Ti bolt sets for stems on Ebay but some Chinese metallurgy is not the greatest and would worry me a little.

Old thread, but speaking of titanium and stems... has anyone ever found a titanium replacement for the super big bolt in a quill stem? I'm upgrading/modernizing an old steel bike for racing and got bit a little by the weight weenie bug. Just that one particular project, my other bikes I don't really care about a pound or two here or there. I'm trying to keep it original steel frame and fork, but cut weight on all the extras. The biggest bolt on the thing is that huge one in the quill stem seems like if there were ever a bolt that would account to a decent amount of weight reduction it would be that one.

Not as much weight savings as you might think. I weighed a bunch of left-over steel stem bolts from quill stems I no longer have. They all were around 50 grams. A Ti bolt of the same size would weigh 58% as much or 29 grams. So, for the cost of that big Ti bolt you will save 21 grams or less than 1 oz.

The OP hasn't logged in here since July 2014.

^^^At my age, that's like a week ago.

Yes, i was already aware of the weight. There are many things I paid more for similar ~20 gram weight savings (brake calipers, derailleurs, seatpost, etc). I'm pretending to be a weight weenie here, 21 grams adds up, just depends on the cost. One nice thing, even though the weight savings is minimal, is changing bolts like this for the most part doesn't effect the look of your bike at all, where as changing out a chromoly fork to carbon, or aluminum wheelset to carbon, can drastically change the look. I just don't know if there is enough hardware to go Ti that it would make a big enough difference, especially for the cost. The quill bolt was the biggest I could think of, perhaps followed by the caliper brake pivot bolts.

Just search "titanium quill bolt". I replaced my SS quill bolt with a Ti bolt, grams/dollar was reasonable and that is about the only SS-to-Ti bolt swap for which you can say that. The strength of the bolt isn't critical since this fastener is never tightened much. Make sure your stem expander is alloy, and consider cutting your stem short, for more weight weenie gram savings.

Quill stem conic wedge bolts ? Cinelli 1R came with aluminum ones , [ the 1A was steel ]
as said it Doesn't take much to makesufficient stem to fork friction.

If that rust pocket is an issue.. there are plastic caps that cover the hex socket.

FWIW I did google such a search about a year ago and came up with nothing. Though I've lost the info I even figured out what threads it was and searched for titanium screws of that thread pitch, etc. Perhaps it's time to try the search again, not that I am in any big hurry to do so it was just an idea.

Old fashion quill stems are a tad heavy, especially if you need a long/tall one, but small as possible works on my fast bike. I found a vintage 3ttt one on ebay, 240g. I later decided to change the color scheme to black. Could not find a good light weight vintage so I just bought a new one that seemed pretty light (and cheap). Its 242g, but also 10mm shorter. After getting these out just now to check, the new one has a larger bolt they the bolts are not the same diameter. The newer/larger one was around 50 grams and the 3ttt was almost 10g less. What would be pretty cool would be to not only use Ti but have that long bolt drilled out hollow lol. Anyhow I apologize for the derailment the op wasn't even trying to be a weight weenie.