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How To Tell If It's Really Titanium

Posted by Zonk on from the hold-your-credit-card-to-a-grinder dept.

With the growing popularity of titanium, some disreputable merchandisers are passing off other materials as the more expensive metal. Popular Science looks at a surefire way to prove what that credit card/crowbar/ring is really made of. "Hold any genuine titanium metal object to a grinding wheel (even a little grindstone on a Dremel tool will do), and it gives off a shower of brilliant white sparks unlike any softer common metal. The sparks are tiny pieces of cut titanium--the friction of the grinder heats them till they burn white-hot. Hold a grindstone to the shackle of a "titanium" padlock from Master Lock, however, and you'll instead see the telltale fine, long, yellow sparks of high-carbon steel."

3 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Titanium: not recommended for rings by steveha · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I read a story about a couple who loved bicycling (and loved their titanium bicycle frames). They decided to have rings made from titanium.

    One day the guy had some kind of accident, and his ring finger was mashed; it swelled up badly. They took him to the emergency room. In the ER, someone got out the cutters to cut the ring off the swollen finger. Whoops, titanium. The cutters (probably simple diagonal cutters) had no problem with the usual soft gold rings, but titanium was too hard! They wound up getting a Dremel tool or the equivalent and cutting the titanium ring off (very carefully, I imagine).

    The moral of the story: if you get a titanium ring made, maybe you should wear it like a necklace.

    P.S. Merry Christmas everyone.

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  2. Re:Safety first? by smidget2k4 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gloves + rotating grinder = BAD. You don't want a glove to get caught in that, your hand goes with it. Better to be burned by some sparks than to lose a few fingers (at best).

  3. Re:Interesting! by BlueParrot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you know of a more reliable way, I'd like to hear about it. No, seriously.


    Physics to the rescue:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur-Vaidman_bomb-tester