Due to the rather little exposure, many questions arise concerning titanium and tungsten when it comes to choosing jewelry. The followings
are some points of consideration if you are seriously thinking about
buying a titanium or tungsten wedding ring.
1. Hardness
Titanium and tungsten are both known for the superior hardness over traditional metals such as gold, silver, and platinum. One thing worth
noting is that it is not the metals themselves in a pure form that
possess the hardness, it is their alloys that do. Roughly speaking, the
hardest form of tungsten carbide is harder than titanium alloys, and
only under extreme circumstances, such as abrasion from diamonds, can it
be damaged.
2. Ductility
Titanium is more ductile than tungsten in the common alloys used in jewelry. In other words, when a wedding ring is under high pressure,
such as hit by a car door, a titanium ring would be bend out-of-round
whereas a tungsten carbide ring would fracture into several pieces.
Hence, in terms of safety, a tungsten carbide ring is safer to wear.
3. Hypoallergenic
This is the very same concern as buying silver jewelry to some people: Will I be allergic to the jewelry? In general, titanium jewelry
is virtually safe to wear for everybody. Yet, some tungsten carbide
jewelry contains the element cobalt that some people are allergic to.
Interesting, another form of tungsten alloy using nickel as a binder
metal is hypoallergenic, even to people who are allergic to nickel.
4. Weight
Titanium is lighter than tungsten, or more precisely, has a lower density. Titanium alloys are about 43% lighter than stainless steel and
tungsten carbide is about 90% heavier than stainless steel.
5. Coloring
Titanium reacts with different chemicals and produces alloys of different colors. Jewelry makers use anodization to coat colored
patterns on titanium rings. Black titanium is another form of titanium
alloy that has a different color than the commonly used grey color. On
the other hand, tungsten carbide is usually offered on in black color
only.
6. Pricing
Titanium jewelry is in general cheaper than tungsten jewelry primarily due to the difference in equipment and environment control
need to produce them. The temperature for forming a tungsten carbide is
about 6000 Fahrenheit, which has to be in either a vacuum or hydrogen
environment.
7. Engraving and resizing
Titanium wedding rings can be engraved and resized. However, a tungsten carbide ring is too hard to be engraved or resized. Although
engraving can be done, the letters will be very faint and difficult to
read. So if you are buying to ring to engrave, get titanium rings.
