13/05/2026
DO YOU LIKE BLACK JEWELLERY? READ THIS CAPTION!
Aight so here’s the craic.
Black jewellery in this industry is a tricky one not everyone knows about.
A lot of what you see on the internet, that shiny, black stuff you see for cheap in all sorts of “gothic” fashion sites etc is actually total trash.
Here’s why.
Alot of cheap black jewllery uses something called a PVD coating (physical Vapour Deposition) which for all intents and purposes is spray paint, a bit tougher and baked on granted but it amounts to the same thing.
The issue here is
1. That stuff itself is not good for the human body when it enters your bloodstream and…
2. Aint nobody using that s**t on APP verified Materials, so when it neveitble chips off what’s left underneath is cheap mystery metal which is also not good for you. (We all know nickel is bad but did you know cadmium is especially bad for you? It can do very bad stuff to your internal organs, including the reproductive ones)
So what do you do if you still want black jewellery?
Enter NIOBIUM!
Niobium is APP approved, it does not have an implant grade because it isn’t used in implantati0on buuuuuut it is fully biocompatible! It’s also used in space ships.
The magic part about it is also that if you heat treat it and then polish it it goes a lovely black colour that is still totally safe!
I actually did this one myself
I ordered it for my client Caleb from .handcrafted but I forgot that Caleb would want black stuff (I usually just order them black)
But I dusted off the tools and had a good time doing blackening this myself!
Niobium is soft so most common for simple rings, but some manufacturers do more complex threaded stuff too!
This is why I always say it’s best to order your piercing jewellery from a piercer!
The internet is full of filth and lies!
