Tungsten Dragon Dice
Heavy, strong, durable.
These tungsten carbide dice destroy tables and NPCs
Space aged metal
Tungsten, derived from the Swedish, tung sten which literally translates as heavy stone.
Tungsten is also known as tungsten named for the mineral, wolframite, in which it is found.
Scheele, was named heavy rock in Swedish, from which we get its name in most of the world, Tungsten.
On the other hand we have Germany, which logically insisted on calling it wolfram since it was found in the mineral wolframite.
To appease those perfectly logical Germans, tungsten as the elemental symbol of W, and the rest of the world simply ignores the fact that they insist on calling it by the wrong name.
These are the hardest dice we make.
Tungsten carbide is incredibly difficult to machine and chews through our tools with reckless abandon because it is made of the same material as our tools.
Nothing feels like a dice.
They are the heaviest dice ever created and after holding one, nothing else seems to feel right.
These dice seem to have an extra presence in their reality.
Science and Lasers Oh My!
Unlike other metal dice on the market, our dragon breath dice are given their numbers at the end of the crafting process.
They are etched with a laser ablation process.
That’s a fancy way of saying we blast the surface with 1.21 gigawatts of awesome laser-beam sauce that vaporizes the tungsten carbide into its components, leaving behind an ultra-polished number embedded a few thousandths of an inch deep.
This process leaves the perfect balance of the underlying platonic solid completely intact, unlike the machining of a deeply embedded number.
Sinter and Polish
Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal at 6,170 degrees F.
Even though the sun’s surface is so hot, the sun wouldn’t even begin to boil tungsten because its surface temperature is 1000 degrees cooler than tungsten’s boiling point, meaning that liquid tungsten could flow at the surface of the sun. , a place where all other metals would vaporize into nothingness.
Tungsten refining
Tungsten cannot be refined like other metals, because you know, everything is hotter than the surface of the sun.
Instead, tungsten is extracted from the ore through a lengthy chemical process that you read about here.
Suffice it to say that the process produces some amazingly vibrant oxides that can then be broken down into pure tungsten powder.
This pure tungsten is still ready for die life.
No, we don’t use the metal form of tungsten, we make these dice from an incredibly strong ceramic called tungsten carbide.
However, carbides are usually alloyed with cobalt through a process called sintering.
Sintering occurs below the melting temperature of the base metal in this case, tungsten.
For our purposes, however, we use nickel as it gives us the ability to achieve a higher polish and is less reactive to skin allergies.
It has everything we could dream of in an ultra heavy die.
A super hard surface for durability and long lasting polish.
(Seriously, this stuff is almost as hard as diamonds, coming in at a mind-boggling 9.5 out of 10 on the Mohs scale.) It’s very tough, so it won’t crack or break like tungsten pure
These give us the extra kick to the colors we can achieve with our Dragon’s Breath finish.
End of Dragon’s Breath
Like all our metal dice, our tungsten dragon dice are given our signature Dragon’s Breath finish.
This is a thermal anodizing process applied by hand to each die.
The skill of the craftsman here is shown in the vivid and bright coloring unique to each individual die.
This coloring will vary in a pattern of shades from golden bronze, through deep violet, to royal blue and sky blue.
How are we able to achieve such a vibrant color palette?
Our dragon breath process involves a very intense flame, over 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact.
Beneath this blast of pure distilled draconic hatred, the base metal undergoes a surface transformation reacting with atmospheric oxygen.
This reaction forms a *not very* clear crystalline oxide layer that gives us the green, turquoise and purple radicals these dice are known for.
But how does this *not-quite* transparent tungsten oxide crystal layer create these beautiful colors?!?!
Through the magic of a soap bubble and the beauty of tungsten oxide crystals.
Soap bubbles are made of a very thin film of…
Like the soap bubble above, light can pass through and reflect off the surface of the clear crystalline layer formed by our dragon breath process.
This happens at the molecular level, which means that the difference between the reflective surface of the crystalline layer and the titanium base are only a few nanometers apart.
This matches the wavelength of light.
Using this interference in reflected light we can control the perceived color of the matrix simply by controlling how thick we allow the outer layer of titanium crystal to grow.
In this case, our crystalline layer is not exactly clear…
While it is true that we get a large color shift from thin film interference, in the case of tungsten, we also get an added effect from the vivid saturation of these tungsten oxides of indescribably varying brightness in colors from bright yellow to deep blue and chocolate. purple ones like the ones you see above.
Using the combination of the two effects gives us the green and purple epics seen on these dice.
If you want to read more about the crazy colors of tungsten oxides, check out this great research paper.
Types of dice
Amount of Tungsten Dragon Dice