I went through a jewelery phase as a teenager— and not the good kind; the cheap kind, with a ring on every other finger and a pound of chains around my neck. Cheap jewelery is all well and good, but only to a certain extent and only if you don’t wear it day in and day out, because, as you very well may know, your skin— that which is in contact with the metal– will turn green. And when you’re a teenager, the last thing you want to add to the list of things to feel self-conscious about is any sort of unnatural pallor of skin color. As a 15-year-old, I was not exactly sure why my particular brand of drug store bling was having this effect, but I managed to figure it had something to do with the fact that it was inexpensive. And on a fundamental level, I was right. The jewelery I bought from the tacky little shops at the mall did not generally sell merchandise out of good stainless steel, if they sold any stainless steel at all. They certainly did not sell jewelery made out of 316 stainless steel. If they had and if I had cared enough to spend the extra money, I guarantee I would not have woken up to green rings around my fingers.

316 stainless steel is, in popular opinion, second in command behind 304 stainless steel, both of which are in the family of austenitic steels. Austenitic steels make up more than 70% of stainless steel manufacturing, as they are comprised of significantly desirable characteristics— they are basically the cool kids in the already cool school of stainless steels. They’re characteristics include an extremely high corrosion resistance, great welding and forming abilities, and can easily be rolled or broken into smaller parts for such applications used in the architectural, industrial and transportation sects. 316 stainless steel is also, as I’ve hinted, a popular choice of material for jewelery, because it does not experience oxidization or change its aesthetic properties.