Unusual wedding rings

March 16, 2004 12:10 AM

Unusual wedding rings to replace worn meteoric ones? [more specifics inside]

For our wedding 18 months ago, my bride and I picked out what we thought were some real doozie rings -- meteoric nickel-iron that had been etched to reveal the Widmanstatten patterns and then gold-plated, and wrapped around a sterling inner ring.

But, they're not wearing well. The plating is thin (not a slam on them; I think it had to be to keep the patterns showing clearly, and there's not much point to meteoric nickel-iron if you can't show off the weird, wacky patterns), and is wearing down so it looks like, well, nickel-iron, and it's starting to make stains on my beloved's hand. Which I WON'T STAND FOR!

So, it's gonna be replacements. We definitely want something a bit off the beaten path. Budget isn't a big big deal, but at the same time we don't really want to spend $500/ring if that money could go to other Mutually Agreed-Upon Causes.

So far we've looked at different titanium rings, which seem cool (me, I like that you can anodize them to reveal different colors in grooves; I dunno that she's sold on this).

So the real questions: what else should we be looking at? Has anyone had experiences with titanium rings, or different sellers thereof?

posted by ROU_Xenophobe to Shopping (8 answers total)

We went with 99.5 silver, cast in a mold of our own design. 99.5 is pretty brittle stuff, and it's probably going to fail at about the 10 year mark -- well, at least mine will, I'm hard on my hands -- which seems like a good time to have them melted down and recast.

At the time, having the mold made, purchasing the ingots, and having the rings cast cost about $600 or so, for both. They're both quite thick, heavy, and wide, differing only in fit.

I'm terribly fond of my ring.
posted by majick at 12:35 AM on March 16, 2004

I was going to suggest a mokume ring, but your price point won't get there, AFAIK. Mokume rings have layers of different-colored metals to achieve a swirling wood grain effect.
posted by planetkyoto at 5:08 AM on March 16, 2004

my sister had titanium, i think, and it looked just like stainless steel to me (i was surprised at how it scratched). she seemed happy enough with it though, until they split up.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:46 AM on March 16, 2004

There are some really nice titanium ring designs here, if you care to browse through the collection.
posted by Danelope at 8:13 AM on March 16, 2004

I had my ring made by Mike Augspurger at One-Off Titanium.

It's pretty simple - the style is "plain band with edgebands". The finish dulls a bit with age, and that's fine w/me. Wicked light, because that's important <g>.

I've heard that one downside of Ti rings is if the ring gets caught on anything, it won't give - unlike a gold ring. So if you were to do a lot of woodworking for example, you may not want to wear the ring. But that may be a myth.
posted by Icky at 10:58 AM on March 16, 2004

My honey and I have titanium/platinum rings, identical except for size. You'd think that the design might have been his choice, as he's an engineer, but actually it was mine. The rings were inexpensive, when compared to typical gold models; and this way I've never gotten even the slightest remark about my ring not incorporating a diamond, which is another rant altogether.

Anyhow, the titanium is light and comfy, and unusual enough to draw commentary. The only drawback that I've heard is that the material may make rings difficult to resize; check with your vendor about the possibility of adjustments before purchasing.
posted by clever sheep at 1:11 PM on March 16, 2004

I second (or third?) titanium - my wedding band is such - extremely light, comparatively inexpensive (the wedding ring business is a serious racket), and it holds up well - coming from someone who tends to scratch things easily. In addition, mine is brushed to hide said scratches (even with titanium it still happens.)
posted by jazzkat11 at 2:01 PM on March 16, 2004

titanium
My brother makes them, will try asking him about tips regarding the scratches and post back.

Was surprise too that mine scratched. I had one that me and my friends hit as hard as we could with a hammer seeing if we could bend, squish or disfigure. Titanium holds its form better than most alloys making it unique. Also it is a human friendly metal. My friend who is very large, squeezed it in a large table-vice which finally snapped the ring.
posted by thomcatspike at 4:58 PM on March 16, 2004