A whole lot has changed today. Not only did I get the site updated from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7, but I added a lot of functionality that should make it a more friendly forum experience. And the new theme (the visual appearance) is supposedly mobile friendly.

The forums used to look just like some plain tables, but now they look much more like a modern forum that people expect. I added private messaging and email notifications (i.e. following or subscribing to a forum thread), which I find highly useful myself.

Good Morning!

We haven't done much with this site in a long time, but we recently realized it can still have a purpose. You see, Shire Silver is not just a particular brand of innovative bullion, but its also the model used to create that brand's products. Since the model has been placed in the public domain, and others have used it in similar forms, we figured this might be a good place to have free and open discussions of not only the model, but all kinds of related topics.

We welcome discussions about

I just ordered the first shipment of silver source material to use for the first round of testing. With the price of silver in FRNs being near a year low at around $11/ounce, now is probably a great time to buy. However, this source for the milled silver has a markup of over 40% above spot. I think its worth it, just to be sure of the quality. There's also additional charges for shipping, so the markup is approximately 50%. Hopefully the markup will be lower for larger orders.

This morning I finally got around to doing the first round of testing, using copper as a cheaper analog to silver. While it does show that just using a hammer won't be enough, it does indicate that we're on the right track.

Hammer: AKA mini-sledge. Hammer Results: The result of using the prototype die with the hammer. Sledge: The sledge hammer. Sledge Results: The results of using the sledge hammer on the prototype die.

Dave Ridley put up a video of the prototype die set we are looking at: Ridley Report on Shire Silver

Thanks to Ryan for making the die set!

We all had a great time at PorcFest. I handed out some brochures introducing the idea. I also gave a small presentation on it at the Alternatives Expo.

Because I log on to this site using an account with all permissions, I see everything. I see stuff that hasn't been approved yet. Thus I didn't notice that several of you have commented on things and the comments aren't showing up for everyone.

I have commenting set so that "regular" users can write comments, but they need to be approved before they can be seen by others. This is very useful in preventing spam, and creates a list of comments needing approval. However, I had forgotten, and hadn't been checking the approval list. This has been going on for months. Sorry.

This is just a friendly reminder that the Shire Silver Design Contest deadline is just over a month away. We haven't received as many submissions as we would like, and none of them so far meet the specified criteria. Please consider entering your own design.