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| A shiny, silvery blue, very dense precious metal which belongs to the platinum group. As a powder it reacts with oxygen to form a pungent, toxic oxide.
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Arc-melted buttons.
Producing these beautiful silver-blue pieces of osmium shot is a labor of love: osmium is hard to handle and has a very high melting temperature. Just about the only application for the solid metal is as an exhibit in a periodic table display! This is not an off-the-shelf material. Osmium metal is generally obtained in powder form. This has the unfortunate property that it oxidizes in air to produce the highly poisonous osmium tetroxide which reacts very easily with organic material such as the cornea of the eye. Therefore finely divided osmium must be processed under an inert atmosphere of argon gas before melting in an arc furnace.
Source: specially produced
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 99.9%
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Fountain pen nib.
In the days when every school student owned a fountain pen, the Osmiroid was a popular brand in Britain. Osmium's extreme hardness makes it a suitable material (usually as an alloy) for coating the nib tip to prevent wear. This is one of the few industrial applications for osmium metal and gives the Osmiroid pen its name.
Source: eBay
Size: 5"
Purity: n/a
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