the wonders of palladium

I've been making jewelry lately as a hobby. Right now I'm part way through a really nice ring for my girlfriend, and when I was designing the ring for her I figured I would make a simple band for myself too. I don't really like to wear jewelry, and certainly don't want something fussy or easily damaged, so simpler was better.

These days gold is hovering around $1,000/oz (using the bastard troy ounce and not the much more useful and common avoirdupois ounce) and platinum is somewhat higher. Kitco has a nice set of precious metal charts with both current and historic prices (www.kitco.com/charts/). Interestingly palladium is a jewelry metal that has some working properties that are similar to platinum, and this last year the palladium market took a shit, dropping to below $200/oz for a bit.

So when I ordered the metal for my lady, I got some Pd for me, to use when there was a lull in projects. As it happened the other night one popped up, and I had the bar of Pd with me at the time. I did a couple of simple operations to turn my little grey rod of 95.0% Pd into a flat bar to make into a ring shank.

I'm such a nerd I even make notes to myself as I'm working on recreational shit

I rolled it down a few more times, and then annealed it to ease the bending processes to come, and, wouldn't you know it, that little fucker blistered on me.

top view, one is on the left and one middle right

profile of other side of the bar

I'm a little pissed, since the thing is essentially ruined, but I've never worked with this metal before so I don't know if I fucked up or it was a bad ingot to begin with. Hopefully the company I got it from will help me out.