The Truth About Tungsten

In any industry where retailers are vying for your attention, hoping to sway you towards their product, there is bound to be things written and spread by word of mouth about the product, both good and bad. While most trustworthy retailers take enough pride in their product to present to potential customers the honest truth, from time to time a few unscrupulous dealers, focused solely on profits and little else, will omit or even promote misleading facts about their product in order to close a sale.

Sadly, the jewelry industry is not above this.

As you’ve probably been noticing in your search for the perfect wedding ring, there are many metals competing for the right to be a part of your wedding ceremony and marriage. While some are traditional like gold and platinum wedding rings and appeal to a classic sensibility, others like tungsten carbide, titanium and cobalt chrome boast the modern and alternative appeal of being the most durable wedding bands for men and women. And each metal has their own properties and qualities. With so many metals available, competition is tight.

At Tungsten World, it’s long been our philosophy that the rings sell themselves. It’s a pet peeve of ours when certain “buzz” words are used in the industry to push tungsten rings on customers with descriptions that aren’t necessarily true.

This is regrettable, as this misinformation detracts from the inherent benefits that tungsten wedding bands provide their wearers. As durable wedding bands, tungsten rings are the hardest material in the jewelry industry currently available to brides and grooms. The resulting hardness of the tungsten carbide in your wedding ring makes it very resilient to any types of scrapes, scratches or scuffs that can occur from wearing your ring on a daily basis, but as with all things, tungsten rings are not “indestructible.” 

Retailers using words like “unbreakable” or “indestructible” to sell tungsten wedding bands are either misinformed or simply preying on their customers lack of knowledge. While the rings may be nearly indestructible, it’s important that customers are aware of the natural characteristics of harder metals like tungsten. Due to their extreme hardness, tungsten rings, similar to the hardest natural material, diamonds, can be fractured, chipped or even cracked when suffering from the brunt force of an impact from a similarly hard substance. 

Although the chance of a tungsten ring breaking is very low, we can tell you as the leaders in retailing these rings the likelihood of damage occurring to your ring while it is on your finger is minimal at best. The majority of the stories we hear regarding tungsten rings and damage occur when the ring owner is not wearing their band or when the ring is not properly sized and comes off without warning from the wearer’s finger. In light of this, the best way to avoid damaging your tungsten ring is to KEEP IT ON! Wearing your band will greatly decrease the likelihood of anything bad happening to your ring and also keep your significant other happy.

Return to Education Center