Pricey, yes, very! That's why they call them precious metals. This group is the royalty of the periodic table and is most famous for three members silver, gold and platinum. Ruthenium is actually undervalued relative to its rarity. Every year some 4000 tons of gold are produced. For Ru? Just 12 measly tons or, to put this into perspective, a little less than a cubic meter. That's about the size of a baby crib(!)

The making of this cube is a story in itself. It took a team of 9 to make who combined spent some 50 hours from beginning to end. The first step starts out with a bag of 250 grams of 99.95% pure Ru powder that is placed in a mould. The mould and powder are then placed in a huge heated press where the combination of heat and pressure fuse the powder into a solid mass. The rough ruthenium block is then manually sawed into a slightly oversized cube to recover some of the precious metal. This cube then goes to a different machine where the operator has fed its control system the dimensions of the final cube with a little extra padding on every side.

This machine then uses a very fine stylus that nearly comes into contact with the ruthenium surface. An electrical charge is passed between the two creating an electrical arc whose spark erodes away a little of the metal on each firing. Because the amount of material removed on each spark firing is very small, but also precisely known, the machine's computer can direct the stylus to create the shape with great precision by firing those sparks millions of times until finished.

Then the more or less finished cube goes into another computerized machine. This time a specialized polisher called a flat lapping machine which spins the cube against a very flat surface with a scouring sludge in between and a weight above. Our hapless Ru cube is then forced to be scraped on this wet grinder for several hours. And then five more times for each remaining side!

But we're not done. The lapping leaves a smooth surface but it can be improved yet more by hand polishing. From there it's on to the final step where a laser machine engraves the text and off to be packed and sent to Luciteria. And that's pretty much it. Making a video of this whole process is on the bucket list; for when time and funds allow!

Each 10mm cube weighs 12.4±0.05g