Fine Homebuilding recently sent me a box of Stiletto’s new titanium pry bars to try out in place of my little old Japanese pry bar. The bars range in length from a compact 5 in. up to a full 14 in. and, as far as pry bars go, are rather complicated affairs. Each bar has numerous facets, oddly shaped holes, and castings that flow from slim tapers to swollen reinforcements. Depending on the bar you choose, there are recesses for pulling staples and finish nails, hexagonal openings for changing circular-saw blades, sharp edges for cutting boxes, and bottle openers for the end of the day.

The titanium lives up to its billing of light weight (about half the weight of steel), and the bars are quite stiff, with a feel I can describe only as “dead” when hit with a hammer. My worry that a steel hammer would mushroom the bars has so far been unfounded.

When I went to the Stiletto Web site to do a bit more research into the purpose of all the nooks and recesses on some of these bars, I noticed the pricing. The titanium version of my $12 steel standby sells for $70. I felt a growing queasiness in the pit of my stomach when I did some quick mental math and realized that I unwittingly had about $500 worth of titanium pry bars lying around the job site and on my portable workbench. And that’s really the rub, isn’t it?

These tools are terrific, but do I really want to have to worry about where my pry bar is at all times, having to protect it as I do my miter saw and cordless drill? For me, the answer is no. Besides, the bar I normally carry is so small that the weight savings of switching to a titanium model would be negligible. I can imagine, though, that somebody who has to carry a full-size bar in their tool belt all day, every day, would jump at the chance to carry a $170 titanium flat bar that weighs half as much.

What I’d love is a couple of these unusual and highly functional Stiletto designs in steel.