Tungsten Carbide Rings 101: Emergency Removal of Tungsten Rings

How to Remove Tungsten Rings In an Emergency: A Safe, Simple Procedure

There are many questions, rumours, and utter misconceptions circulating online about what should or must be done for the Emergency Removal of Tungsten Rings when a person wearing a tungsten carbide wedding band suffers an injury with swelling to the arm, hand, or finger requiring the ring to be removed. Traditionally, wedding rings are made with gold or other similarly soft metals so it was just a matter of snipping the ring with metal or wire cutters. Of course this method will not work on a very hard strong metal like tungsten, but it is still absolutely possible to Safely Remove a Tungsten Ring.

Much of the confusion regarding how to remove tungsten rings in emergencies stems from the accurate but misinterpreted reputation tungsten rings have for being extremely strong, hard, and difficult to damage. Tungsten carbide does indeed have all these qualities, but due to a lack of knowledge or the intention to deliberately scare consumers away from competing merchandise, the toughness of tungsten has somehow spawned a ridiculous myth: the claim that tungsten rings cannot be cut off in emergencies and would thus require amputation of the finger. This could not be more wrong! Again, tungsten rings cannot be cut off by traditional methods, but they are certainly not indestructible. Any personnel responding to an emergency remove tungsten rings by cracking them with an everyday set of vise grip pliers, which are found in nearly every tool box and kept on hand by emergency rooms.
The emergency removal of tungsten rings should be performed by paramedics, doctors, or other emergency personnel whenever possible rather than attempted by the wearer or an untrained individual, but on the condition that we make it clear that an untrained individual should safely remove a tungsten ring for his/her own hand or someone else's ONLY as a last resort, a knowledgeable tungsten rings company has granted us permission to use the following video. In this video, they demonstrate how to remove tungsten rings in an emergency.

To remove tungsten rings in emergencies, you need only a set of vise grips. The emergency removal of tungsten rings is quite easy; simply clamp the vise grips onto the ring and listen for the ring to crack, slightly rotate the ring, and apply pressure with the vise grips again until the ring breaks. If you've followed the instructions for how to remove tungsten rings in an emergency the ring will shatter into several pieces. It is , as a matter of fact, easier to safely remove a tungsten ring than other types of rings. One can remove tungsten rings in emergencies with no further injury or discomfort to the wearer, while gold rings usually bend out of round during trauma and cut or compress fingers in painful ways, and getting a cutting tool between the bent gold ring and injured finger in order to remove it can be excruciating. Tungsten rings, on the other hand, cannot bend out of round, and have often actually protected the ring finger from the brunt of the trauma. Tungsten rings can only break or not break, and since incremental pressure from a vice grips is used to remove tungsten rings in emergencies, no more pain or disturbance to the injured area occurs.

So as a last resort in an emergency, remove tungsten rings as instructed in the video above. The amputation myth is busted!