Metal and three houses

• Paper / notebook. Ink runs. Fire wins. Do not stop here.
• Steel plates. Survive most house fires and flooding. Watch cheap stamps.
• Titanium stamp plates. Higher melt point, no rust, compact. Recommended default.
• Digital copies. Photos, clouds, printers, password managers — treat as a leak.

1. 01 · Private room. No phones. Plate on a steel block. Stamp each letter deep.
2. 02 · Number words 1–24. Quiet label such as S1 — not your name, not “Bitcoin.”
3. 03 · Read the plate back against the paper seed. A mis-stamped word is a bricked backup.
4. 04 · Restore from the plate on offline Tails and confirm first addresses.
5. 05 · Destroy the paper only after the plate-restore check passes. Destroy the bit notes in the same pass.

The 24 words on the home plate, alone, open one small wallet. Leave a little bitcoin there. A thief who loads only those words sees that balance and may stop.

The same words plus a passphrase open a different wallet for modest spending. Write the passphrase down. Do not stamp it on the plate. Do not keep it in the same drawer.

Those words are still one key of the long-term fund. The fund needs any two plates. Do not put a passphrase on the 2-of-3.

Print the output descriptor and keep the recovery workbook. Store that packet with Plate A and a copy at one off-site — never beside all three seeds. Hardware wallets do not replace these plates. Once a year at home: restore from plates, receive dust, spend dust, update locations. Write a letter that points to this packet and which two locations are needed — not the words.