While items made out of pure beryllium are quite rare, it is commonly seen as a “bronze” when alloyed with copper. The addition of a percent or two of beryllium to copper turns this otherwise soft and delicate metal into a workhorse. Beryllium-copper tools are not only strong and hard-wearing but possess the highly desirable characteristic of being non-magnetic and non-sparking too. That’s good for bringing down the stress level of workmen tasked to fix, say, a leaky gas line.

Aluminum, another metal essential to just about every industrial use, also greatly benefits from being alloyed with beryllium. While aluminum, unlike copper, is quite hardy in terms of resistance to corrosion it’s on the other hand even wimpier than copper when it comes to its innate strength. How hard is it to crush an aluminum can? Add a pinch of beryllium though and - whoa! - that aluminum now is nice and strong. You can imagine how desirable that would be, for example, in the making of airplane frames.

So if it’s so great why not go it alone? You wouldn’t have to water down this wonderful metal with riffraff like copper and aluminum if it wasn’t for beryllium’s price to be flirting with that of precious metals. In fact, its price literally rivals that of gold or platinum after machining costs are taken into account. Its extraction and purification are expensive enough but the work that goes into doing anything with it is just nuts. Pure beryllium tubes scavenged from Soviet-era facilities routinely fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay despite having no obvious use. Even as scrap beryllium carries itself as though it were fit to be sold as jewelry.

Who knows, someday it just might be!

Measures 15x8x4.75mm