Quick, what’s the hardest metal? Bank vault steel? Titanium? Bzzzzt! Nope, it’s chromium. Few would guess that chromium is the hardest of all the pure metallic elements when to most people the word is associated with secondhand motorcycle parts. It almost certainly has everything to do with the fact that chromium is very brittle. Little good to have a material literally as hard as a gemstone if it falls apart when you so much as look at it wrong. Such is the case with this element which besides its top-class hardness rating is also damn near rustproof. Pretty much all the world’s chromium is mixed with iron to make steel or other compounds. Pure chromium is a no show (well, excepting coatings of questionable taste).

Luckily for Luciteria, refiners do take the trouble to purify the metal to the desirable “4 nines” (99.99%) making chromium very affordable to own in small quantities.