Has anyone here had to travel with their steelwallet? How did you play it cool? I'm all ears for tips, especially if there are any ninja moves for keeping the seed phrase under wraps in such situations.
Are there specific types of steelwallets designed to mitigate this risk, perhaps by obscuring the seed phrase in a way that's not immediately visible?
People usually don't carry their metal seed words on every travel they make, this should be only done if you are moving away to a different country, or if they plan to do some coin and seed words management.
Any stainless steel will likely be detected by airport scanners, but there are some ways of mitigating this and one of them are faraday bags with your steelwallet placed inside.
There are even faraday wallets, but there is a risk with this method, so I would propose making your own DIY backups, or using temporary paper or plastic backup.
I was even thinking of using old G-shock (or other) wristwatches that have large databank functionality with passwords, that can be great stealth way for passing borders easily.
This depends on the paranoia that each person has regarding the possession of their coins.
Do you just want to protect your coins from agents and scanners getting access to your coins, but it's okay if they know you have a steel plate or hardware wallet?
So in this case, I recommend carrying a ready-to-use hardware wallet with the seed phrase defined and then using it normally.
If you are carrying a stainless steel plate, it's better to add your funds in a BIP-39 passphrase, but then you have to either memorize this passphrase or keep it in separate places from the seedphrase, such as encrypted in open source mobile password managers.
If you think that being seen with a hardware wallet or a seed phrase on a steel plate is a threat to you, I recommend that you don't even carry these two items, just carry an encrypted hot wallet on your cell phone, at least momentarily until you arrive in the destination country. I wouldn't trust my seedphrase to anyone, so I don't think it's a valid alternative.