Tungsten is tough stuff. It’s as dense as gold or uranium and it is also the hardest metal to melt. And it has the highest tensile strength. A small amount of tungsten added to steel makes the steel stronger. Tungsten alloys are thus everywhere.

The symbol for Tungsten is W from the German word wolfram and the main ore of tungsten is wolframite.

One of the interesting compounds made with tungsten is tungsten carbide or WC. It’s a powder and can be shaped into many forms. It’s as hard as corundum or sapphire, corrosion-resistant, and is many times stronger than steel.

When fine powders are compressed to a point just short of liquefaction they fuse together. The process is called sintering. Brass is commonly sintered, for example. Sintering is used with tungsten carbide because of the very high melting point of both elements. Sintered WC has many applications for machine tools, especially in extreme environments, and its hardness makes it a great abrasive. It has to be polished with diamonds but it holds its luster and doesn’t break or scratch. Sounds like good stuff to make jewelry from, and that is a major use for WC. Here’s an example: