[ANN] 1st of its series, Silver BTC Blockchain statue

[SaltySpitoon]

Ahoy all, so I've been playing about with the idea of a physical interpretation of the Bitcoin blockchain. This is a VERY rough model, and things will change quite a bit, as I fine tune and fix the little details that I find have ended up strangely, or as I add more detail. The top face is supposed to be the globe with the smaller circles being nodes (its lacking detail at the moment) the left side will have the Bitcoin symbol (also needs some touchup), and the remaining faces will be sort of a labyrinthy circuit board looking design, which also requires changes from the model.

For scale, the main feature is a 1x1 inch cube, and the statue should weigh in at around 7 ounces. This will all likely change quite a bit. I think I'd like to make it a bit bigger, but we'll see how all of the numbers end up when done.


https://i.imgur.com/BLUPR3t.png

There will be a limited number of pieces made, the quantity of which, I'm still deciding on. As of this moment, if anyone has any feedback, please don't hesitate to let me know. I fully intend to do a LTC and ETH version as well, but one thing at a time.

[Hhampuz]

This looks sick Salty, if you are able to make it look as good as intended It'll surely go down as one of the coolest pieces available! I'd love to see it a bit bigger as well, can never have too much silver

[SaltySpitoon]

This looks sick Salty, if you are able to make it look as good as intended It'll surely go down as one of the coolest pieces available! I'd love to see it a bit bigger as well, can never have too much silver

Thanks   

I'd like to make it bigger as well, but the issue is with the laws of scaling. If I make it 2x2x2 instead of 1x1x1 we are now up to ~50 Oz of silver . I'd prefer not to use 0.1 BTC in material, because then it'd start throwing the statues out of many people's price ranges. I would potentially make it a bit bigger at 1.5x1.5x1.5 for ~20 Oz of silver.

I could always make multiple sizes available, I suppose. One for the guy who doesn't have enough BTC to throw at a 5 Kilogram solid silver statue, and another for those that do. But that'd probably annoy the hardcore collectors here who have to have a matching set of everything (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)

regardless, I'll figure out a workable solution. Thanks for the input.

[ChiBitCTy]

Like Hampz said you get anywhere close to that and everyone will want one.  I am not a whale so I would appreciate smaller pieces as I know many others here would as well.  I like the idea of making different sizes, personally.  So is this simply a silver work of art..or doing any cold storage with this?  Care not either way, this is really bad ass.  Would be cool if you took video of any parts of the process too. 

[krogothmanhattan]

Very cool bro. You have a price in mind? Would like to know before I commit

[Lesbian Cow]

Can it be1 kilogram?

[SaltySpitoon]

Like Hampz said you get anywhere close to that and everyone will want one.  I am not a whale so I would appreciate smaller pieces as I know many others here would as well.  I like the idea of making different sizes, personally.  So is this simply a silver work of art..or doing any cold storage with this?  Care not either way, this is really bad ass.  Would be cool if you took video of any parts of the process too. 

The way I've kind of decided to do things, is to use pieces like statues and such to help pay for some expensive machinery I need to make coins and other things with wallets on them. As I've mentioned a few times, I'm not really content with paper wallets. I found the laser cutter I need in order to engrave into metal pieces, however its going to cost around 1 BTC. Once I have it, I'll be able to put wallets on near anything. I've already got some coins in mind, but until I can engrave their keys on them, they are on the backburner.

I'm not sure how I'd do this or if it'd be worth it, but in the future, I'd be happy to engrave encrypted keypairs onto the base of the statues. And of course, I'll try and record everything. Sometimes I'm rushed for time, like when plaster is drying on me, or when I've got 10 lbs of molten metal in one hand, and miss a few steps, but I'll get as many as possible.

Very cool bro. You have a price in mind? Would like to know before I commit

Absolutely no idea at the moment. I'm not at the stage of taking orders or anything yet. If all goes well I might be able to have the first one made next weekend, and I'll have a better idea then, but I don't do preorders (I lived through the BFL days). I will be sure to keep everyone updated.

 

Can it be1 kilogram?

If I make multiple sizes, getting to 1 kilogram wouldn't be too difficult. My only concern is when you are doing large pours, its difficult to get all of the metal to solidify at the same time. If it cools even a little bit while you are still pouring metal, you get layers like this.

[SaltySpitoon]

So here are some pictures. The larger model just came out of the printer, so its all ugly and needs to be cleaned up, the smaller one as well, but to a lesser extent. Just posting pictures for size comparison since we were discussing that yesterday. The smaller one is the original 1x1x1 inch cube. The Larger is 1.5x1.5x1.5 inch.

I had to make some changes due to mold constraints. The Bitcoin face will be the front, the globe with nodes the top, and the labyrinthy pattern on the back. I had originally planned on putting the labyrinthy pattern on three faces, but there would be structural problems with it on the production side if I did that, so two faces are smooth. (Maybe a place to engrave key pairs later on?) Uhhh, if I was an artist I'd say I did it intentionally to symbolically represent that the blockchain is whats going on behind the scenes. Yeah... lets go with that.

The smaller one should be around 7 ounces, the larger one, around 24 ounces. I might play around and see if I can get one to exactly 1 kilogram, but I'll need to cast these first to see how they end up first.

An additional idea that I had is to make a massive bronze statue for those that want a large Bitcoin statue, but don't want it to have a $1000 melt value. I have been working on an aluminum bronze alloy to make pan handles out of anyway, it looks pretty similar to gold color and shine wise, maybe it'll make a good statue material.

Regardless, I'll have all decisions set in stone relatively shortly.






*if the images don't load for you*

https://i.imgur.com/UhBBJKF.png
https://i.imgur.com/8l6bhSV.png
https://i.imgur.com/dONv0Kt.jpg



*Edit*

And cleaned up a bit, still haven't fine sanded the lines off, but this gives a little bit better look at the detail.
https://i.imgur.com/xxhNhGt.jpg

[mortare]

Interested in this one, sure if it is a .999 fine silve.

[digicoinuser]

Looking really good so far salty!  I'm interested and looking forward to the first cast. 

[SaltySpitoon]

Glad people are liking it. I had a lot more detail in mind, but I cant make it come out how I want it without a much larger model, or a much better printer... one of these days.

On a side note, I think I'm going to go ahead using the larger model for both silver and bronze. I figure it should be pretty affordable at least for the one that doesn't require 25 ounces of silver. I actually might cast a prototype tomorrow weather depending.

[SaltySpitoon]

Could you do a copper filling with silver plating?

That is also an option! I'll try out a few things and post pictures to see what looks best.

[chronicsky]

Can it be1 kilogram?

oh please think about people oversees you silver cow

Could you do a copper filling with silver plating?

That is also an option! I'll try out a few things and post pictures to see what looks best.

i would rather prefer silver, copper is way too much of trouble to keep if its heavy

[killyou73]

Can it be1 kilogram?

oh please think about people oversees you silver cow

Could you do a copper filling with silver plating?

That is also an option! I'll try out a few things and post pictures to see what looks best.

i would rather prefer silver, copper is way too much of trouble to keep if its heavy

Why is the copper too much trouble to keep? Would it turn green

[TheNewAnon135246]

Also interested in a .999 silver version.

[SaltySpitoon]

i would rather prefer silver, copper is way too much of trouble to keep if its heavy

Why is the copper too much trouble to keep? Would it turn green

Not if plated. Anyway, I can electroplate Bronze with silver anyway, so there's no real point in making a silver plated copper version. If I alloy some bronze today into casting grain, I'll post pictures. Its a really nice color, not sure that you'd want to plate it in silver anyway.

I'd really like to make things like this in Argentium, but for some reason people seem to be against non pure silver. I'll probably do that on another project and just tell people to deal with it 

[SaltySpitoon]

Just figured I'd share this, I just made one of my secret bronze alloys that I was talking about making the statues out of. This is what it looks like, and why I wouldn't silver plate it. I poured the shot too fast so its a big spikey mess, but yeah, it looks pretty decent.

https://i.imgur.com/6ST9Ta2.jpg

[SaltySpitoon]

Ah, just an update, so I'm thinking that I'll make a maximum of 10 sets of the ~20 oz 1.5x1.5x1.5 statues. Still deciding on whether I'll make any of the 1x1x1 inch ones, as the detail may not come out as well. Feedback is welcome of course. Regardless, I hope to have the first created some time next weekend, and I'll have the total production, size, and materials 100% decided on by then.

My materials used will be .999 fine silver and this bronze alloy I made last night.

https://i.imgur.com/Fu3t19x.jpg

[TMAN]

Wow can't believe I missed this.  Great to see some innovation here again so glad you are active here again salty, so refreshing compared to the shit that dickhead OgNasty keeps on cluttering this place up with.

[SaltySpitoon]

Wow can't believe I missed this.  Great to see some innovation here again so glad you are active here again salty, so refreshing compared to the shit that dickhead OgNasty keeps on cluttering this place up with.

The compliment is appreciated. I have a lot of respect for OgNasty, and though its not my place to get involved in personal disputes, for the sake of not dragging this topic off topic, I'd hope that anyone wishing to respond to this in a manner that'd detract from the topic do so via PM or a separate thread.

I hope that you'll look forward to some interesting things moving forward. My technical resources are improving, and it should make a lot of neat stuff, especially when paired with metal casting.