Does anyone know how I could make a time capsule that could last

>>1163768
Glass and Argon are usually the way to go. You seal the contents in a glass tube and fill it with argon and maybe a partial vacuum before burying it down, preferably in a strong container so it doesn't breaks when someone finds it in his patio 100 years later.
Plastic decays after some dozens of years.
Argon can be bought for welding but sealing a glass tube requires special equipment.

>>1163768
A century or two is relatively simple - standard time capsule stuff. Thousands of years is a whole other level. Chemical stability of the things being stored is a big deal at that time scale. Unless the things were originally made to last forever, they probably have acids and other residual chemicals that will degrade them over time, even in an inert atmosphere. Archivists probably have the references you'll need here for neutralizing and preserving papers and other materials.

But just spitballing something that would last ages: Cast each item into acrylic resin. Put the castings into an argon-filled glass tube packed with enough silica gel to keep the castings from moving around. Seal the tube. This goes in a thick 316L stainless box filled with silicone resin. Deeply engrave some information about what's in the box, weld the box shut, and passivate it. Make arrangements to have the box stored in a cool dry place indefinitely, or until a particular date.

>>1163790

This is a superb post, and exactly what I was looking for, thank you. Getting my hands on resin and argon shouldn't be too difficult, and I know a few welders. I'll have to see if a few glass blowers in my city might be able to help with a custom order. I have a place where I may also be able to cast the capsule in cement to keep it permanently.

Money isn't an object, so its nice to know where to start looking. Thanks /diy/

>>1163793
Be sure to check with a professional archivist (someone at your local library may know one, or there may be online communities). I'm not familiar with the long-term chemical properties of acrylic, and there may be a better resin to use. Also, be careful about casting in cement. If it's not clearly a time capsule, it's liable to be demolished in a way that would smash the box and its contents. 316 stainless handles exposure to weather well, so that shouldn't be a problem. A shelf in a museum or library basement would be better anyway.

>>1163790
>silicone
>acrylic

>he's never seen silicone start to corrode metals and absorb the oxides into a reddish greenish goop

Using organic materials is just a plain bad idea.

Im going to go a completely different route... a bit more modern. Scan all the documents, drop off copies all over the internet - cloud services, etc.

>>1163934
>last hundreds, preferably thousands of years
>cloud 'services'

nope.animated.gif - while the internet (& cloud, etc.) are theoretically a great long-term storage medium, in practice, still waiting on someone recovering that geocities homepage I spent ages on. Information is retained just as long as its useful/someone is paid to do so, which again in practice, we are probably already well into the first generations who will _never_ see photos of their grandparents, as the digital storage medium, card/Disc/HD/PC, its long borked/lost/reformatted, whatever.

>>1163949
if its on geocities.. good chance its on "the way back machine" website.

Put your paper inside plastic ziplock bag and get as much air inside it as you can then fill a wooden box with water and put ziplog bag in the water. When the bag is in the water just mix the water with sand and Coca Cola. Then seal the wooden box everything is in and put it inside of iron box, fill the iron box with water andix it with salt,sugar and flour, bake it for 30 minutes in the oven on 200celcius. After that just burry it all with your hopes and dreams under the ground where it will slowly disappear into nothingness just like our lives on this earth. After 200 years someone finds bunch of rust and notices what a retard you are for even reading all this.

-wave

>>1163790

As >>1163840 said, any kind of preservation in an organic material is not going to last. Even the best platinum-cure silicones usually are only expected to last 25 years or so. It's simply too hard to reduce them to completely inert substances that won't simply self-decompose.

Moreover, all those layers of crap are pointless. A single, sturdy, gas-proof container is all that's necessary. Glass is the first thing that comes to mind. I suspect gold might be better, but I feel like spending tens of thousands of dollars for a gold capsule would be kind of retarded.

The point about asking an archivist is a good one. They'll know how to best prepare the items themselves for preservation. No point in hermetically sealing them if they'd just turn to dust on their own.

>>1163768
>I want to preserve them long beyond when I'm gone
why?

>>1163777
>>1163768
Ceramic containers too.

The most ancient relics we have were carved in stone.

>>1163768
Some of the oldest preserved things archeologists have ever found are ceramic pots and glass jars of honey. I highly suggest you look into those materials and consult local experts on them as other anons have suggested. I hope you succeed in this as time capsules are really neat and preserving things for the future to see is incredibly important. I wish that more people would feel that way. If you are going to get a capsule you might want to save some stuff about yourself too. Might give some more context to the people who open it in the future about what the documents mean and why they were saved.

>>1164286
>all those layers of crap are pointless
The glass and inert atmosphere provide chemical protection for the stored items. The steel box and silicone provide mechanical protection for the glass. Glass lasts for ages if it's not disturbed, but most things get disturbed over time. We have ancient glassware today, but most such glassware broke long ago. OP wants this particular one to last.

>>1163793
i used to blow glass, and most of them wont be able to do it. I suggest going to a neon light maker. give them all a try though. Also, if you cannot do it, you might wanna bring your own vacuum device to the glassblower to see if they would be willing to experiment.

>>1163768
Stick a fake treasure map in a Breakfast club lunch box

Documents in an airtight container will mold. I've seen it. A vacuum is necessary.

>>1164318
I hate people like you.

>>1165419
No, it's a legit question.

I think he wants his descendants to find them in the far far future.

Unless he doesn't have any kids...

If no kids, then I want to know why too.

>>1163768

>trying to preserve paper

Atleast just get the shit lamanated

Or your going to have to get a vaccine chamber

>>1165146

The glass shouldn't need protection. Modern, toughened glasses are far stronger than even the best glass available just 100 years ago. And any sort of reactive metal (which eliminates virtually every easy, cheap metal) will just corrode eventually. Some sort of clay foam (along the lines of insulating firebrick) would do better at providing some limited shock resistance, long-term.

>>1163768
Carving whatever you want preserved into a rock worked pretty well for a lot of ancient societies. Of course, you'll need to take heed of what >>1165423 said and be sure your rock gets all its shots up to date before you place it in a cave. There's lots of nasties it could catch without the proper vaccines.

>>1165419
It is a legit question. Who is intended to eventually open the time capsule, and will they give a damn about its contents? As >>1165421
said, if it's distant descendants, they'll look at it and perhaps think it's neat to read a little about their great-great-great-great grandmother, but even then, if it's not presented in context, they won't be able to really appreciate it.

Then there's the question of how you direct anyone in the future to find and/or open it. You could seal it into some part of your house, but the house is likely to be demolished in <100 years, and the demolition crew won't know or care to be gentle at finding and retrieving a time capsule. If you bury it, how is anyone supposed to locate it? In hundreds or thousands of years, landmarks like trees or buildings will likely have been removed or changed enough to make any directions useless.

The idea of placing it in a library or a museum might be a decent idea, but you've got to first convince the institution to take the capsule. There's no real incentive for them to let your sentimental box take up space and not get lost. As libraries and museums change hands, governments rise, fall, or merge, who knows where it'll wind up, and again, if someone will care to open it, not open it prematurely, or not to throw it away.

There really aren't many good examples of time capsules in existence, especially on the timescales you're after. There are the tombs of Egypt, but most of those got robbed shortly after being interred. Can you say you really feel much closer to or more informed about a pharaoh from the relics and hieroglyphs in his grave?

There are many such pharaohs who were once powerful kings who are now little more than names on a list after a few thousand years. How pretentious is it for common folk like us to assume that anyone even a few generations removed will give a damn who we are?

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

>>1164361
Those ceramics are very brittle and are usually filled withing something because they let shit in, which helps preserve the pot but not its contents.

Best bet is contacting a museum and talking with their archivest.

>>1165417
Then it was sealed with the mold on the material already. Baking it until 200f/100c will take care of mold spores, but may kill the material being preserved.

>>1165419
hate you too bitch

>>1163793
Damn bro, that's love. Care to share with us?

http://news.mit.edu/2015/mitnano-time-capsule-1118

Not a direct reply to your OP, I think most rational bases have been covered, just reflection on the topic of time capsules/superfuture storage:

In the sci-fi book series "The Three Body Problem", Cixin Liu explores just this, but on global scales. What would a future society hundreds of years ahead actually find from us, and what information storage would be permanent enough to make sense?
The story is rather depressing, and the case for time capsules containing ordinary items is a bad one, if it's intended for more than 50-100 years. Even then, only the most professional and intricate designs stand a chance of not turning into goop and nothingness.
A future society half a millennium ahead would find very little that with our tools would be legible. A few mediums stand out, glass, stone and corrosion protected metals. However, these are not very dense, information-wise.

There's a part of the story where the protagonist slips a million years ahead in time, missing her lover by about as much. She discovers massive 2 meter stone carvings on raw mountain, but is still only able to make out snippets of characters and words.

In short: information is extremely fragile in a cosmic sense. Only the most carefully planned carvings into the walls of climate sealed, reinforced, geologically inert stellar bodies stand a chance of surviving more than a few thousand years.
We may be able to design shapes that convey information by their structure alone, that can survive this, but if it's an ordinary object in earth conditions, it's by definition impermanent. Glass doesn't degrade totally in about a million years, but most of us don't have the opportunity to laser-imprint data into meter-large cubes of glass.