I’m currently the middle of wedding prep, and that means emailing/calling vendors; following up with invited guests; and buying all sorts of random things like wedding card boxes and “Just Married Signs” and suits and, of course, wedding bands. As I’m not one to go the traditional route on pretty much anything, I decided against a standard gold band; I wanted something car-ish, so I thought to myself: “What car-like thing is the shape of a wedding ring?” Then it came to me: A tire!
It turns out, tire rings are a thing — I had no clue. But it seems like there are all sorts of vendors on Etsy making custom rings that look like tires. Unfortunately, the first vendor, named Racerings — a big one in the tire-ring space — stopped making tire rings out of Titanium, which is the material I wanted (since I think its color would look the most accurate, and it’d be durable). But then I happened upon an Etsy vendor named Jason Olsen, who runs VentureCustomShop out of Nebraska.
I peeked at a few of the rings in his online store, and asked if he could make me a custom one out of Titanium. I was trying to decide between the classic look of a BFG All-Terrain or my favorite off-road tire, the Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac.
Jason said he could do either. In fact, after I sent him the exact tire treads, he even scanned them both into his software:
Look at how detailed the tread is! Surely the final product won’t have sipes, right? Surely they’re far too small?:
After just a couple of days, Jason sent me a few photos of my titanium ring, right after sandblasting and before any coating had been applied:
Then Jason added a “Battleworn” finish, which he says hold up extremely well to abuse, which is good, because when I wrench I destroy pretty much everything (my phone has taken a beating over the years).
It looks pretty good:
Then Jason sent me this glamour shot, and my jaw hit the floor:
Holy smokes! That looks like an actual Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac!
Within fewer than 10 days of my initial request, I had this box at my front door:
Look at how absurdly detailed this thing is!
Total cost was $320, which is significantly cheaper than a standard gold ring. Yes, Titanium isn’t as precious as gold, but boy am I blown away, and excited to wear this thing everyday.
Um.
Does want.
(Not yours, of course, but mine own)
Been wearing a Ti ring for 24 years now. It has held up very, very well considering everything I put it through. Good choice.
Well if you ever go full-fledged tire-themed supervillain, this is how we’ll find you out.
Wow, David, what an awesome ring. You must be so stoked.
I’m amped!!
Be sure to pace yourself. You don’t want to be too tired for your wedding.
Shockingly cool ring.
As a fellow titanium wedding ring wearer, I’ll pass along some wisdom that a cyclist friend of mine picked up from an ER doc he frequently rides with:
Don’t wear this while riding/skiing/doing any activity where it is possible/likely that you will break or dislocate your ring finger; most ERs don’t have the equipment to cut a Ti ring off a hopelessly swollen finger.
I swap over to a silicone ring for that stuff (concerts and football games too…clapping hurts with a solid ring).
Congrats!
I’ll probably daily-drive a silicone ring.
A Ti ring can be cut off with a standard ring cutter, which is something most ERs, fire departments, and lots of ambulances actually have. Not only that, you could also use a pair if sidecutters. Ti is not hard to cut. Why does this falsity keep getting passed around in this thread.
If an ER doesn’t have something to cut off a titanium ring, that means they are unequipped to cut off a gold, silver, or platinum ring too.
Yeah, it’s my understanding that it’ll mess up the cutting blades and they won’t be *happy* with you compared to using it on softer metal, but titanium can certainly be cut.
Brings new meaning to ‘Ring time.
Does “Elise” know how to to do the installation and balancing?
Titanium stains porcelain. I stopped wearing mine after I realized that too late. This is an awesome idea and result !!!
that’s pretty wild and cool. Good luck.
That rough texture is gonna fuck up your hand dude – particularly the interdigital fold between your ring finger and middle finger, and the ring side of your middle finger. That’s fairly sensitive skin there.
And that’s before you start doing any actual work.
You’ll find out fast why wedding rings are generally fairly smooth.
Weren’t these abundantly advertised on the last two pages of Cycle World all throughout the 90’s, along with the “Human Pheromone X” ads with the ugly lady doctor something something, that was the same ad for about 20 years – almost as persistent as the Jonathan Zizmor tight skin ads in the NYC subway ?
That’s an awesome ring DT! (it really is!)
I would suggest that you get yourself an Ultrasonic jewelry cleaner. Due to your frequent wrenching that ring is going to collect some serious dirt.
(add it to the Bridal registry) 🙂
Luckily, Elise (Not Her Real Name) has one!
So will “Elise” be getting one too but with diamond studs?
The level of detail on that is amazing!
We made each other’s rings for our wedding, and I specifically went for nice soft gold so it can be cut off. Also she made it with a hammered and brushed finish because that’s how it’s going to end up looking anyway.
Her ring needed a weird custom bend in it to fit around her engagement ring, and the jeweller overseeing the ring making insisted that I spend four hours carefully filing platinum to shape, rather than let me spend half an hour making a press tool and engineer it to shape.
Yeah my ring would need a cut off wheel or a pretty serious side cutter at 10k. I’m guessing yours can be cut off with a pair of scissors?
I work with a lot of different metals, and gold, silver and aluminium are so much softer than platinum, which is much softer than steel, which is slightly easier to cut than titanium, which is a dream to machine compared to tungsten.