Titanium jewelry gurus – in here please (HELP!)

[admin]

I just bought a titanium necklace (well, I bought it a couple days ago, just got it today) and I’m concerned.

I bought it here: http://www.seaofdiamonds.com/item.a…2049&zmam=9874632&zmas=1&zmac=7&zmap=116-1111 , which clearly states that it’s titanium. I did a lot of research/shopping around, and you can pick up a chain like this for right around $100 bucks. This one said “Retail $200, pre-sale $80, your price $64” blah, blah, blah. Seemed like a good deal, so I bought it.

In some of my research, I had seen “titanium stainless steel” necklaces on eBay. I didn’t know what that meant and wasn’t interested in ’em since I wanted titanium – straight up.

The necklace arrived today, and I was giddy to open it.  When I got it out of the box, it was pretty, but seemed heavier than I was expecting. I compared it to a sterling silver necklace of similar size and style, and it was almost twice as heavy (28 grams vs. 15 grams on my cheapie postal scale). :shocked:

The ends have connectors soldered on, sterling necklace style, on one side the connector is stamped “TI” on the other side “Made in Italy”.

Not willing to take the stamp’s word for it, I laid it out on my desk, and got out some powerful (for their size) magnets that I’ve got. I placed the magnet on the chain, and to my surprise, the chain was slightly attracted to it. :green:

My understanding is that titanium should not be magnetically reactive at all.

So I did some experimenting:

I placed my magnet near the “titanium” necklace, which was laid out flat and straight on a wood desk. Most links would jump to the magnet from about 1mm distance. Some would not jump at all. I could lift up off the desk about 5 links worth before it would fall from the magnet.

I placed my magnet on the sterling silver necklace. Nothing.
I placed my magnet on a titanium quick link from CountyComm. Nothing.
I placed my magnet near a stainless steel size 6 split ring (weight >1 gram – didn’t register on scale). The split ring jumped to the magnet from about 2cm distance.
I placed my magnet near a stainless steel Berkely Point nano (size 1) clip (weight 2 grams). The clip jumped to the magnet from about 1cm distance.
I placed my magnet near my damascus steel letter opener (weight 13 grams). The damascus jumped to the magnet from about 1cm distance.

Here are my conclusions:

There is clearly a slight amount of something ferrous in it – it is not pure titanium, it is an alloy of some sort.
It’s not straight stainless, as it’s much less magnetically reactive than known stainless objects, which are far less reactive than my damascus steel letter opener.

I did some cursory research before posting and have found that there’s LOTS of titanium alloys. I haven’t found yet which ones, if any, have something ferrous in ’em.

Obviously, it’s “buyer beware” out there, and I guess someone could manufacture an alloy that’s 51% TI, and call it “titanium”.

So here are my questions:

How can I easily (meaning without complicated lab experiments) tell if it’s titanium at all?
How common is a titanium alloy with iron/steel in it?
Are “titanium stainless steel” chains as found on eBay really an alloy of titanium and stainless?
How big of a difference is there between the one I got, and something that’s stated to be made of Grade 1 commercially pure titanium like this: http://titaniumstyle.com/Merchant5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AJC&Product_Code=6-012 ?
Should I be worried that it’s an alloy, or is this pretty standard in the biz?

And the biggest question of all, which you probably won’t be able to answer: Did I get ripped off?

:shrug:

#1

[Author]

Posts