Goodmorning, good afternoon or good evening,
Clay here, can provide a little background on ourselves, the bars and why we made them. And can answer some questions if asked.
I joined the Bitcoin train in 2013, mined some BTC (gold rush fever), did some day trading on Cryptsy (yeah... different fever) and bought my first Casascius and Lealana coins.
Since I have a background in Arts & Crafts, Silver-smithing and IT, I thought I could do the same as these (visionary artist) guys, but handmade instead of minted (albeit late at the party).
As with many things in my life, it just remained a thought for years, until a friend of mine got interested in gold and silver pouring (and watching Gold rush or Gold war on the Discovery channel).
At first we were planning to mine silver oar in Norway... Or look for gold grain in Switzerland. Never happened. At some point binging Youtube silver pouring movies, we discovered that there is something called the 'Delft Clay method' to pour simple silver objects with some detail, we were born and raised in the city known for 'Delft Blue' porcelain objects.
My friend works with metals, laser-cutters, milling equipment and such, so that came in handy. The idea of a handmade crypto collectible was born (again).
We asked another friend for a logo design and help with a Woo-commerce webshop, she did a great job with our logo me thinks (stylized image of pouring silver). The webshop is still under construction.
We started pouring silver and aluminium for the fun of it (liquid silver is mesmerizing) and to see if we could do this crypto collectible. Since we were born and raised in Delft (the Netherlands), we thought it would be fitting to use the 'Delft Clay method' to pour our first objects.
I used Sketchup to create several shapes for a mold, 5 OZ and 2 OZ basic forms and some smaller stuff. The 3D printing process came with a learning curve on its own...
We chose to start with a bigger model; because of the weight and feeling of a chunk of fine silver in-hand. We went with the 5 OZ model.
Shrinkage... We should have known that. We knew the model would not be 5 OZ because of the coin logo and some milling for the titanium plating, but we did not held any account to the 10-20% (size) shrinkage with regard to the 3D printed resin model. Bar nr.3 also has been polished at first, then we decided to sandblast the bars instead of mirror-polishing (so this bar has been handled, filed and sandblasted more).
There should not be much discrepancy between the bars, but there is somewhat due to filing and sanding and the way the silver settles in the Delft clay.
Took us about 10 pours to get something decent from a 3D mold, hot liquid silver has a mind of it's own and silver pouring is not as easy as it looks (safety first!).
At some point we decided to use titanium to engrave the keys and adresses on. Good decision, but cumbersome.
If you want to see parts of the process, please look at:
https://twitter.com/ClayCastCryptoI think we made them to see if we could, at some point it became prestige (or a burden that needed to get finished).
We agreed that if we could end up here, on Bitcointalk, our mission was a success.
Thank you Mantis, thank you Bitguy, thank you all.To summarize:
- We underestimated every step in the process, but finished our first 10 bars after two years of learning on the job.
- We had a lot of fun, but it is a challenge to start a project with one (or two) of your best friends...
- We wanted to create, make and do as much as possible ourselves. Lasering on self-destructive holographic paper was a bridge to far.
- It's good to learn on the job, but we have no Business plan or model, need to work on that.
- We have a 80% finished webshop, but no products...
- Maybe we should have funded it with 1 LTC because of current LTC price, but we really wanted the amount of LTC to be on par with the amount of .999 silver OZT.
- We hope that these bars will become sought after collectibles, and hope you will make some profit in a couple of years because of intrinsic value (or sooner, LTC value).
- Why LTC? Just a soft spot for this coin. It does not pretend to be Bitcoin or better, it is Litecoin.
Moving forward:
- It's still a hobby thing.
- Looking at 'smarter' 3D molds for smaller poured objects (pouring multiple small tablets at once), also to reduce price somewhat.
- Looking at enclosing NFC and other chips for other feats (Augmented Reality and such).
- We are watching movies about setting gems (pave bridge, blue sapphire on LTC), adding some elements of gold and such. Will take some time to add gems, but we want to.
- We bought a couple of kilo's silver, we want to do one more series of LTC, off course BTC and probably Gulden NLG (because we are Dutch).
- We are keen on ETH as well, but should be finished with black Rhodium layer we think.
- Looking at a lot of stuff, but in reality, probably will move forward with same kind of bars first.
Proof of trust, proof of integrity:
- That's hard. Could dox myself, but think appropriate time would be if we open up our webshop (and after I sold my own stash of crypto collectibles).
- The only thing we were worried about was the quality of the lasered private key characters on 10 x 10 mm titanium. Turned out fine. Will post an example soon... (
I just did, sneaky me...)
- Can do BIP38, from our perspective that's ok. From a collector's perspective a bit strange; a move from trust to buyer instead of creator.
- We have about 40 more sets of titanium plates to use + 990 holo stickers, so will do funded.
- Will order new holo stickers for DIY or Buyer funded for future projects.
Edit: First come, first served...
Hope this helps somewhat. Questions are welcome. If you would like us to do a 'special' silver or gold bar, can be arranged, even in small numbers.
Regards,
Clay
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