Ah, titanium. I love you but you hurt me so.
"Titanium was discovered in Cornwall, Great Britain, by William Gregor in 1791 and named by Martin Heinrich Klaproth for the Titans of Greek mythology" - Wikipedia.
The benefits of Titanium are its strength, durability and lightness. The flip side of this is... It's a mongrel to work with and it cannot really be resized. Of all the metals we use it is the only one which is significantly more resistant to scratches.
Titanium rings are milled from a single piece of metal and cannot be cut and soldered. The only size adjustment we can do is to round the inside edges to more of a comfort style fit, making the ring feel 1/4 of a size bigger.
Therefore it is very important to get the size right first time. The only way to do this is to try on a ring that fits and is the same width as the one wanted and get a size from this - measured to the edge of the ring (some jewellers measure to the middle of the band on the measuring stick, we measure to the leading edge). Any other method is just not precise enough.
The etchings are not black as with silver and gold but slightly iridescent colours - mostly greens and blues. We colour our rings a dark green, as close to black as we can manage. Other colours are possible but it is not an exact art so there is always some variation.
Titanium is very hard and therefore there are some limits as to the designs we can to etch on it. This also means diamonds are the only stone we like to set in titanium. If coloured stones are what you're looking for we can source coloured diamonds.
For orders within New Zealand, we send a test ring to ensure the size is correct.