How can I prevent scratches on a ring? Do they do case hardening? Can I get it tungsten carbide plated?
I’m guessing I can send it to be polished to remove existing scratches. Does anyone know how much ring material is removed and how many times I can send it for polishing? I’m hoping my ring can last at least 50 years.
“A ring.” You mean like a jewelry ring you wear on your finger?
Visit a jewelry shop. They’ll probably clean it and polish it for free while you wait (they figure you’re going to look at their stuff, and possibly end up buying something). My wife gets her engagement/wedding rings cleaned a couple of times a year at a local shop, no charge.
I’ve seen mens’ wedding rings made entirely out of carbide, but I haven’t heard of rings being carbide plated after the fact. You may want to ask while the shop is cleaning your ring.
Ther’es not much you can do, other than not wear it. Most rings are made of relatively soft precious metals, so they’re going to ding and scratch.
Like Machine Elf said, you can get tungsten carbide rings- they’re not too ornate, but they’re definitely scratch proof. One thing- you don’t want to wear them around power tools, etc… because they’re very hard if not impossible for EMTs and ER staff to cut through if they need to get it off your finger.
While carbide can’t readily be cut, it can be cracked off. It’s hard, but very brittle, so instead of a cutting tool you use a vise. Carbide doesn’t tolerate any plastic deformation; instead of crimping tightly onto your finger, a carbide ring, when overstressed, simply shatters and falls away.
Nonetheless, it’s good policy to remove any rings when engaging in handwork. My keyring has a closing hook on it (the kind you find on the end of a dog leash); any time I’m working with power tools or doing any kind of mechanical work (e.g. working on my car), I take off my titanium wedding band and put it on my keyring.
You can polish it yourself, if it’s gold or silver. There are any number of products on the market to do this with. Even toothpaste will often work.
Tungsten Carbide rings can be scratched, just not easily. My wife and I decided on those because we liked the looks and the price, and a few months later working in the materials science lab on campus I scratched mine in a few places on some sandpaper they had in there. My guess is it was from industrial diamonds in the sandpaper.
Since tungsten carbide is comparable to sapphire in hardness, that means it may be possible to scratch it with aluminum oxide, which is the abrasive used in many sandpapers.
I have a sandblasting cabinet at home. The nozzle of the gun is made of tungsten carbide, and the AlOx blasting media does wear it out over time.
My wedding ring is tungsten carbide, and just as shiny today as when I first put it on two years ago (technically, it’s my second wedding ring; my first was white gold and scratched all to hell, so on our five-year anniversary, I got the new ring to replace it). I reckon I could attack it with a Sawzall and it’d still be shiny.
Let’s hope the marriage lasts another 50 years.
Why not think of the scratches as marks of character, an indication of the stress over time that all relationships go through?
If it’s scratched, it can be unscratched. Properly done, almost no material is removed. Much of it is redistributed. If you were careful and tool oriented, you could buff those scratches out with a Dremel type device with a buffing wheel with polishing compound. I usually go through this process after repairing the jewelry of friends.
I hope it lasts 50 years too! Or even longer. I already bought a ring (platinum), so can’t switch to tungsten carbide. I’m a fan of exotic materials, so if I can find a ring made of amorphous metal I might replace when the time is right.
You mean buffing redistributes instead of removing material? I always thought it removed a layer.
Carbide rings are actually a form of ceramic, so there’s no way to plate the material onto another metal.
Don’t worry about emergency medical people - carbide rings have become common enough that they shouldn’t be a surprise at the ER. As mentioned above, squeeze it with a vise or more likely in a hospital setting, vise-grip pliers and it will crack and fall off. Sadly, where a gold or silver ring can be cut off and later repaired, the carbide shatters and is irreparable.
With gold, metal is removed. With Platinum its just moved around - you don’t lose any.
Platinum scuffs into a patina which is actually considered desireable to some. However, if you prefer it shiny, regular buffing/polishing at the jewlers will not wear it down, as long as they do it correctly by burnishing it first. (Which I would hope a jeweler would do).
Any metal can scratch and will scratch. My wedding ring is titanium and has lots of scuffs and scritches. My engagement ring is Palladium (a platinum-group metal which is not plantinum) and is dinged up plenty when you look closely at it. I can’t imagine anyone other than me looking closely at it though. From a foot away it looks perfect.