Tuesday, February 15, 2011

A Guide to Tungsten Wedding Bands: Pros and Cons

By Ann Daniels


With so many choices on the market for those in search of the perfect wedding band or a basic fashion piece that will age well and make the right impression, the amount of choices and information can be overwhelming. A good way to approach this is to narrow down options in broad categories and compare the positive and negative traits of each one that interests you. This article will help you to make the basic decision between a traditional ring or a wedding band using modern materials, and outline the characteristics of one of the most popular contemporary types of wedding band: the tungsten carbide ring.

The main thing to know about tungsten rings is that along with being quite affordable, they are very, very tough.

Tungsten carbide is an extremely hard material-so hard, in fact, that diamonds are required to polish the rings during the manufacturing process-which logically tells us that they are extremely resistant to being scratched by other objects. Additionally, tungsten is chemically incapable of becoming tarnished, and due to the extreme heating and tempering these rings receive, they are impossible to bend out of round. Scratching, bending, and tarnish are all problems that come with the territory when dealing with traditional jeweler's metals like gold, silver, and platinum. Tungsten carbide rings will simply age far better than the average gold wedding band.

These rings are also unconventional, a good match for people who may find traditional styles and metals boring. The light grey color tungsten carbide rings naturally own simply doesn't look like anything else, and further design accents like laser etching and faceting that would quickly erode from a softer metal work perfectly on a metal like tungsten.

It must be addressed, however, that even a great product will require considerations of its potential drawbacks. This is where personal tastes and lifestyle become very important, and decisions must be made regarding which qualities in a wedding bands are desired or necessary, which are negligible, and what problems are deal-breakers.

As we learned above, tungsten carbide rings are extremely hard. This makes them very strong and gives them all of the wonderful properties related to a ring's aesthetic longevity, but this is also the source of the most common issues that wearers of tungsten wedding bands encounter. For example, instead of cutting out or adding in metal to size a tungsten wedding ring as a jeweler might do to resize items made from platinum or gold, a tungsten ring would have to be replaced completely to make a necessary change in size. When choosing a tungsten ring retailer, make sure they offer a policy to accommodate this need.

Also, a harder material that does not bend is more likely to break; this means that a tungsten wedding band will never bend out of round and cause the wearer any of the related problems that can occur when a gold wedding band bends, but under too much force it is possible for them to break. Even this issue has its good point, though; breaking the rings under gentle pressure is the way they're removed in emergencies, and there are many stories out there about people whose hand were accidentally closed in doors or otherwise endangered, and their tungsten rings absorbed the trauma and broke but prevented more serious injury. While there is no guarantee that a tungsten ring would prevent injury and we certainly don't recommend testing this theory, it never hurts to improve one's odds.

In any case, reputable retailer of tungsten rings will be aware of these potential issues and generally offer some type of discount or contingency plan to offset the cost of replacements.




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