Lazy and there's less room for error if you're copying the binary directly off the device. I don't think it would even need to be as complex as a braille reader, as long as the punches show clearly. Funnily enough I tried to find an open source braille reading app/code to see if it could read it but I didn't have any luck.

I will try and film a guide at the weekend and add it to the github repo. Most of the time involved is converting the seed to binary which probably takes about 10-20 minutes for a 24 word seed. Marking the guide then stamping the metal then takes under 10 minutes to do so that gives you a good idea of how long it would take if your wallet had the option to show you the binary and save you converting it.

Thank you for the feedback and I certainly agree, not only is there more room for error but you also can't visually check for errors like you can with the spelling of words from a set list. How much do you think the wallet having the option to display the entropy in a visual format and creating this seed backup method from that alleviates this concern? I'm thinking it could be displayed something like this (again using "satoshi:10111111011"): •^o••••••^o••

Apologies for the individual replies, how do I make a longer merged post? do you mean reply to multiple quotes in the same comment? I'm sorry I'm new to bitcointalk.

Yeah the word to binary is currently the largest issue with this method; luckily it's something that can easily be remedied by wallet software giving the option to display the binary and trying to get some to do this will be my next task.

Sorry for the confusion, the different sizes don't mean anything the dots are just supposed to represent marking the guide with a pen.

Yes I fully agree with wanting to be able to scan the plate directly with a hardware device, my next step of this project is probably going to be to speak to the amazing people working on the Seedsigner and see if they think it's possible to add that feature to their project. If it is possible then you could even have a mode on the device that will tell you the checksum for an incomplete seed, so you would generate offline the first 256 bits of entropy using say coin flips, mark them onto the guide then scan it and the device would give you the final 8 bits for the checksum. If scanning directly isn't possible I still think this could be useful, especially if the device lets you input the binary so you don't need to convert to words. While its 11 bits of data per 'word' vs 4 for an actual word, it should be less button presses as there's only two options (1 or 0) per character vs 26 letters to scroll through when inputting a word into a HW device.

Thanks for sharing, this is another good method and is currently the cheapest way of making metal backups I think, you can even find 3D files online for a jig that makes stamping the washers very easy. However I think my design could be better than this as this method requires an English alphabet stamp kit and a hammer while mine just needs a cheap auto centre punch, you also need something hard to stamp the washers against to make the letters visible. It also takes quite a while to do and if you lose too many washers from the seed then you're in trouble.

The one I made as the example is stainless steel so it should be very durable but I still need to properly stress test it. If I was to sell it I would run tests with different stainless alloys to find which one seems to be the best for preserving the data on it. This design doesn't need the metal itself to be etched or anything like some other metal backup options so if in the worst case the plate is too hard to read the data from, you could always sand the top layer to clear it up and the punches would be deep enough to not be erased.

I used stainless steel which wasn't expensive and should be very durable to heat , acid and impacts. Yeah it not being recognisable is both a blessing and a curse, a thief or anyone that sees it isn't going to have any idea it's bitcoin related but then neither will no-coiner family members. Hopefully they should be able to realise it's important enough to not throw out considering its a steel card with a weird code stamped into in  .

Thanks  . I might look at selling these if I feel there's enough interest to justify the capital requirements. This came about from me not liking the cost of existing options so it was designed to be cheap, I reckon they could be sold with the guide grid already attached for $5-7 dollars so way less than anything else on the market.

Thanks for the feedback  , I can certainly provide files for shorter seed phrases. The other option is to just cut down the 24 word grid to the size you need.

Hi there, I have been working on a new method for creating metal backups and would greatly appreciate any feedback on my method. I have written up a description of how to create the backup cards here: https://github.com/jakob6102/seedcard

This method is:
-Cheap and simple to create
-Requires minimal tools
-Small form factor
-Language agnostic
-Very durable

I believe this could be a good way to make metal backups simple and accessible to a wider audience as it only costs a couple of dollars to make each one and with the support of wallet software can be made very quick and simple to do.