The followings are some points of consideration if you are seriously thinking about buying a titanium or tungsten wedding ring.
• Tungsten hardness than titanium. Roughly speaking, the hardest form of tungsten carbide is harder than titanium alloys, and only under extreme circumstances, such as abrasion from diamonds, can it be damaged.
• Titanium is more elastic than tungsten in the common alloys used in jewelry.
• In general, titanium jewelry is virtually safe to wear for everybody. Yet, some tungsten carbide jewelry contains the element cobalt that some people are allergic to. Interesting, another form of tungsten alloy using nickel as a binder metal is hypoallergenic, even to people who are allergic to nickel.
• Titanium is lighter than tungsten, or more precisely, has a lower density. Titanium alloys are about 43% lighter than stainless steel and tungsten carbide is about 90% heavier than stainless steel.
• Jewelry makers use anodization to coat colored patterns on titanium rings. Black titanium is another form of titanium alloy that has a different color than the commonly used grey color.
• Titanium jewelry is in general cheaper than tungsten jewelry primarily due to the difference in equipment and environment control need to produce them.
• Titanium wedding rings can be engraved and resized. However, a tungsten carbide ring is too hard to be engraved or resized. So if you are buying to ring to engrave, get titanium rings.
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