Imagine a couple-to-be want to give their wedding rings a rather personal touch: they want them to be steel rings where the iron is extracted from their own blood. Two questions arise, then: First, is it even possible to extract the iron from haemoglobin into a form which could be used to fashion a steel ring? Second, if it is possible, how much blood would each of them need to use? (For steel, I suppose some carbon is also required; could that also be taken from the body, preferably not irreplaceably?)
This page indicates that a blood donor loses between 200 and 250 mg of iron per donation. Using that as a baseline, and the higher number, we have 250mg of iron in a pint of blood. The second post on this page seems to indicate that a typical wedding ring is between 4 and 9 grams. Using the low end of the ring weight, 4 grams, and the high end of iron concentration, 250mg/pint, you’d need 16 pints of blood to get enough iron to make a ring. I’m pretty sure that much in one go would kill someone. If you were donating at the red cross rate (60 days between), I’d take three years to donate that much blood.
One site I found stated that an adult male has up to 6 grams of iron in his body. Approximately 2 g in the blood, the rest stored in bone marrow, spleen, and liver.
Steel is about 98% iron and 6 grams is about the right size for a ring.
So one entire adult male, or the blood of three adults males, equals 1 ring.
that might be iron lost. recoverable iron likely would be a bunch lower. amount of metal needed (because of fabrication losses) would be higher. so a longer project.
Isn’t steel iron and carbon? Wouldn’t it be easier to dry and then burn the blood, powder it, and anneal the steel rings with the resulting carbon brushed onto the surface? Some of the carbon would be taken into the steel matrix.
You could gather enough carbon and mix it with raw iron to make the steel, but that would be much more involved. If they’re wanting a symbol, the surface treatment should take up enough of their matter to work symbolically.
I’ll also point out that using the carbon in the blood is a cooler symbol. Carbon isn’t a strong element, but when it mixes with iron, it makes the iron stronger - more durable and more pliant, less brittle. It does this without changing chemically. The iron stays iron and the carbon stays carbon. The carbon settles into spaces between iron atoms and, working together, they are more effective than either can be alone.*
- unless carbon is off making biochemicals, or something - the symbology only goes so far.
“Iron enough to make a nail…”
You burn blood and are left with carbon ? Do you see something wrong here.
If you really wanted to extract the metal out of blood - and had the time and resources to do so, you’ll need to collect all the blood, dry it and heat it up and reduce it by using Hydrogen, Carbon monoxide, or Coke (in decreasing order of efficiency & price ) . Efficiency is around the amount of iron recovered.
Instead, i recommend - you try this. Collect a lot less blood - dry it - dissolve it in muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid - available at most hardware stores) and etch a cool copper or brass ring with the solution :). Here’s avideo of how to do the etching .
You can write your names on the rings using the iron from your blood and not bleed to death in the process. Or you can make elaborate patters - there are a lot of possibilities.
I assume lathed coprolite or beazor just wouldn’t hit the same note.
Note that the iron in blood is not in the metallic state, it’s oxidized. If you get rid of all the organic materials, you’ll be left with some inorganic compound of iron, almost certainly iron(II) oxide (magnetite) and iron(III) oxide, otherwise known as rust, although some iron sulfide (FeS) seems possible, depending on the temperatures and oxygen levels.
Iron-ically (no pun intended though) , “steel” is more pure than “iron”.
What happened in history is that “cast iron” was made high carbon by accident - in the smelting process, which had the aim of making pure iron, the carbon from the coke is mixed into the iron ore, and so the end result is iron with a lot of carbon in it.
So to make steel they have to heat the high carbon iron up to be really hot and blast it with pure oxygen… they burn off the carbon. Then its almost useless soft steel, which is only used in $1 screw driver sets, unless its specially treated after its solidified… with plenty of rolling steps, and heat treatments… When the billet is rolled enough times, and/or quenched in water or oil, it then becomes useful as fencing wire, car bodies, proper screw drivers…
what about everything in the blood? There are other metals than iron in the blood, and things other than metal. What if, rather than just the iron, I just wanted to make a ring out of all the stuff in the blood?
What if you also added other excreta, such as saliva and seminal fluid and nail clipping and urine and wax and stools and hair? Isn’t there also iron in shit?
What if I still had my milk teeth? Not in my mouth, that is, but available for ring-making.
That applies to cast iron, which does have a high carbon content, but not by accident. It’s a more efficient process to use a blast furnace which rapidly reduces iron ore at high temperature causing the inclusion of carbon from the heat source. Earlier iron was made in a bloomery at lower temperatures, sometime directly producing steel or even very pure iron with less than 2% carbon content. The slag content would often be quite high, lots of silica compounds, but these were useful in making wrought iron as the slag turns into fibers appearing as a grain in the iron giving it strength and ductability. The Bessemer process for making steel continues the reduction of molten iron from a blast furnace by providing oxygen which raises the temperature to the point where carbon and other substances in the iron vaporize. The process is generally allowed to continue until nearly pure iron is left and then carbon is added to produce steel.