Redditor creates meteorite-based wedding ring, perfect headline

Redditor Laporkenstein created his own wedding ring out of meteorite and nickel, and documented it with a gallery of more than 40 images. Then he posted it with this headline: "I hand forged my own wedding ring out of a chunk of Meteorite and Nickel Tooling Steel. Here is a huge gallery with 40+ pictures!"

I love everything about this. The project itself is brilliant. Just as importantly, though, the headline tells you exactly what's in the tin. I love Reddit, but I'm often frustrated by the site's characteristic "clever" headlines that "tease" the subject matter without actually telling you what you'll find at the link. If you grab the front-door feed off of Reddit, you'll get a couple hundred new items a day. A feed that voluminous needs what Bruce Sterling calls "Attention Conservation Notices" -- good descriptions that tell you, before you click, whether you're likely to find something you like when you get there.

So thank you, Laporkenstein, for having the pride and confidence in your link to describe it well, rather than coming over coy and cryptic in the hopes of luring the unsuspecting to it.

For the record, Laporkenstein notes that his wife didn't want a "space ring," so he only made one.

I hand forged my own wedding ring out of a chunk of Meteorite and Nickel Tooling Steel. Here is a huge gallery with 40+ pictures! (imgur.com)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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nickelrocket

Wait. His wife DIDN’T want a space ring? Why in god’s name did he marry her?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I give it three parsecs.
  - ocker3
    
    The bragging rights would have to be Huge “My Husband made me this, with his own hands, from a rock that fell from space…”
    
    If that doesn’t make a woman happy, I don’t know what will. Certainly any woman I’d be interested in would go starry-eyed over such a creation.
    - eldritch
      
      He needs to find himself a metalbender who will appreciate such craftsmanship. Or maybe just next time make a jian instead of a ring.
      
      (Oblique jokes, huzzah!)
    - chgoliz
      
      Absolutely. A woman who doesn’t think this guy is the most incredible dude ever for doing this isn’t really HIS life partner.
    - Charlie B
      
      I dunno. I carved earrings for my wife out of my own teeth, and she was totally unimpressed.
- http://ravenlunatick.wordpress.com/ ravenlunatick
  
  Agreed! He can do better.
D Wyatt

I am currently making mine and my womans rings out of something similar. Diamonds are for chumps or people who need to cut glass. They are everywhere on earth in a nearly unlimited and constant supply, so they hold a very artificial value.

Meteorites and their occasional gemstones are orders of magnitude more rare. Not only that but diamonds are made from decay/death depth, pressure and time inside the earth. Our rings have traveled together through space and time for eons, and crashed violently into the earth only to be discovered centuries later and molded into sentiments of forever.

Really like the build. Good stuff.
allybeag

Let’s just hope he doesn’t develop one of the most common allergies around – a nickel allergy, often caused by wearing nickel-based jewellery for extended periods.
- peterkvt80
  
  … and the sky iron will rust unless he keeps it oiled all the time so it won’t take long to start looking shabby
  - andygates
    
    If your skin is nice and oily, iron jewellery takes on a lovely dark patina. So does your skin, but hey.
    - D Wyatt
      
      This is why I didnt opt for making the entire ring from the meteorite. Some metals shouldnt be worn, and dont do well around skin. In all actuality though there are ways of making the ring non-tarnishing for a while, and then the process can be repeated as needed. Something as simple as a quick dip in clear nail polish, to more elaborate clear coatings.
- bcsizemo
  
  Agreed. My wife is allergic to most jewelery. Lucky for me the platinum earrings seem to be doing fine… (her hands are more tolerant, but anything other than hypo stainless or platinum makes her ears swell up something fierce.)
  - D Wyatt
    
    I would be extremely surprised if SILVER earings cause her a problem. Many people dont see silver for the amazing metal it is, many also dont feel silver has enough worth to be considered “real” jewelry so they opt for gold.
    
    I can understand other metals including sometimes gold causing a problem.
    
    Many metals cause people suffering, from the aluminum in deodorants, to gold earings. But I have yet to find a person suffering from SILVER jewelry.
    in fact, when people have irritations caused by other metals I have them dip them in a silver based solution I make myself and they are able to wear them without problem for months. It also stops the itching, rash, irritations that are associated with reactions. Even people who are allergic to stainless, gold, etc.
    
    I suppose why I wrote is Im curious. Does she have an allergy to silver or is it just something she doesnt happen to wear so she is unaware.
    
    PS, Silver can actually heal and cure people. As a child, I knew of an elderly lady in a nursing home, she kept asking for a silver dollar to anyone she saw. I finally obliged the lady and brought her in one of my old silver dollars as a gift(worth $3 at the time). When I saw her later and asked about it. She showed me she had it taped to a wound that wouldnt heal at all, UNTIL THEN. (I do not recommend this in the least, pure silver only) Over a year of a bedsore and in 3 days it was finally sealed and healing. It was at that moment I started experimenting with silver and ultimately became a jeweler.
    - bcsizemo
      
      Sterling silver causes a pronounced reaction as well. She even has a set of hypoallergenic palladium hoops that cause her ear lobes to swell. Now perhaps if it was pure silver, or purer than sterling she wouldn’t have a problem. The diamond hoops she has are white gold, but it is very obvious that the post piece is not the same type of metal. If anything I think it might be rhodium coated stainless given its lack of flexibility.
      
      She has never been tested for a specific allergic reaction, so I don’t know which metal the issue is from. I do know that outside of platinum there hasn’t been a sure fire precious metal that she has found that doesn’t cause her ears to swell. Now her fingers are fine and she wears/has a few pieces of silver, white gold, platinum (engagement/wedding), and titanium.
      
      And don’t even get me started on a necklace….that’s probably even worse than the ears.
- Ethan Taliesin Houser
  
  Not to mention the possibility of her sprouting green plant-like shoots all over her body.
andygates

I knew metal meteorites were metal-rich, but I never knew they were metallic enough to heat in a forge and bash with hammers into bars and rings. I’ve learned something today!

Even better: the gorgeous grain structure in the finished ring is what happens when you heat and beat the unique super-slow-cooling crystal patterns in the space rock. Those patterns “can only take place during very slow cooling, about 100 to 10,000 °C/Myr, with total cooling times of 10 Myr or less”. So it’s not just absurdly unique and nerdy, it’s also uniquely beautiful for SCIENCE reasons.
- http://www.facebook.com/austincashp Austin Cash Priebe
  
  Yeahhhh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news hear, but that unique Widmanstätten pattern that is in meteorites. The one that takes millions of years on another planet to create. It’s gone now, it was destroyed when he heated up the ring to forge it. The pattern you see is a forge welded damascus pattern. But I’m no hater, I still love the ring. Metal working is a lot of fun and I think more people should make their wedding rings. Also the fact that it was meteorite steel makes a good story.
  - andygates
    
    I don’t think he’s folded it enough — the macro-scale pattern is the forge-welded stuff, the yummy grain is the Widmanbattered. If he’d twisted or folded it half a dozen times I’d agree.
grandmapucker

He’d better cast it back into the fires of space, then
SpaceOtter

“Mrs. Laporkenstein. What a beautiful name.”
- chgoliz
  
  Good point. I’d take the ring and pass on the surname.
  - Guest
    
    no no, he’s -giving- the ring to pass on the surname.
    - chgoliz
      
      LOL…point taken.
      
      But the surname is really for the kids. Wife/mom doesn’t need to take it on. And there’s got to be a better option for their kids: some sort of hybrid or truncation. Otherwise, those are going to be some loooong recesses at school.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I hope that her first name is Vulnavia.
Mister44

One time in AZ I saw a gorgeous letter opener made from meteorite. Very expensive, but in hindsight I wish I had bought it.
http://www.facebook.com/ieatlegos Blake Lowe

I worked with a guy at a camera store who was really into astronomy/astrophotography, and he did the same thing… He and his wife bought a bed and breakfast in Arizona that has high quality telescopes on every balcony, and they were supercool people. I can probably look them up if that sounds awesome to anyone, but I can’t remember the name right now. His ring was beautiful, and it looked very heavy but was featherlight. I will absolutely make my own wedding ring and incorporate some meteorite metal, because badass.
http://twitter.com/markzero mark zero (Jason)

the headline tells you exactly what’s in the tin.

Namely, something other than tin.
Alex Copeland

Speaking of Reddit, I wonder how blogs that rely on link-posting (BoingBoing) view content aggregators. Aggregators push more content, have less admin oversight and less editorializing from the submitter.

Two different spheres with no impact on one another, or will aggregators actually steal views in the long run?
techmessiah

My husband and I had meteorite wedding rings but after almost 3 years of dealing with rusty fingers we decided to replace them with plain silver bands. Great in concept but really terrible in practice. :(
Halloween_Jack

He should make one for Sir Terry Pratchett, to go with his sword.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CDBCSJ67QEF6I5EBWZLVPZB5K4 william shannon

a tiny wearable piece of too expansive to fathomness
http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

In space, no one can hear you say “I do.”
ChickieD

My husband wanted a titanium or tungsten carbide ring because he works in a field where he uses his hands a lot and didn’t want a gold band that could get dinged up. I was willing to do a matching ring but when I saw how those styles of rings looked on my hand, it just didn’t play as a wedding band on a woman – especially since I do not have an engagement ring. So, we ended up getting matching gold bands and he can wear his gold band for more formal occasions but he also has a titanium band for everyday wear. I think the space band is beautiful but I could see that it wouldn’t really work on a woman’s hand.