Should You Buy a Titanium or Tungsten Ring
If you’re looking for modern day jewellery, particularly for dress rings or wedding bands, chances are you have come across both titanium and tungsten carbide rings. You could even wonder if one is superior to the other, so we’d love to give you some good info in order to make the best selection for you.
Titanium Jewelry
Titanium jewellery is easily the most familiar of the pair, and is famous for being both lightweight and incredibly strong. It’s renowned for being a part of such innovative technologies like fighter planes, the space shuttle, top end sports cars, and even expensive golf clubs. What you may not know is that there are lots of grades of titanium, and titanium alloys, only some of which are typically found in jewellery. A number of people have shied away from titanium prior to now because of safety issues (eg. can titanium be cut off in an crisis?), yet using softer grades of pure titanium in rings keeps this from becoming an difficulty, as paramedics can safely remove these grades of titanium ring in case of an emergency. Titanium jewellery is often blended with aluminum, which actually makes the titanium stronger, and even more scratchproof, but may be tougher to remove. It really is up to you to decide what you are more comfortable with, and you could ask your titanium rings retail outlet what type of titanium they normally use in their jewelry.
In any event, even the softer grades of titanium are less likely to bend compared to gold and silver, and are also much lighter. This makes for a resilient, and extremely comfortable alternative to popular standard metals.
Tungsten Rings
Tungsten rings (more correctly termed tungsten carbide rings) are certainly not lightweights, and are really quite heavy. Tungsten carbide rings are so called due to carbon that is added to the tungsten. This is necessary as tungsten in its purest form is extremely brittle, and will shatter very easily when accidentally dropped, whilst a tungsten carbide ring carries with it all of the advantages of tungsten but without the drawbacks.
The absolute primary advantage of tungsten carbide rings is that in contrast to any other metal (including titanium rings) they are nearly scratchproof. You may drop them, scrape them, drive over them and punch walls with them, and they will not scratch. It is because tungsten, although brittle, is incredibly hard, and need diamond polishers to get them to a shine. You could be pardoned for thinking someone wearing a tungsten carbide ring had just purchased it, when in truth it could be quite a few years old.
As you have seen, the debate of tungsten carbide vs titanium is not really straightforward, and hinges entirely on the desires of the wearer. If you want a scratchproof ring, then there is simply no question – go tungsten. If you want a ring that looks great, but you scarcely know you’re wearing it – go titanium. Regardless of what metal you select, you can be positive that more than any other metals, they are going to go the distance!