Caching Supplies

[+purple_pineapple]

Don't know if this would make a useful pinned topic, but either way, I have a question! Suppliers of lunchboxes are many and varied, and if you buy them in the shops, you may even get a plastic bag to wrap them in However, I'm quite keen on putting out some micros, and like the magnetic key safe ones. A search on e-bay revealed a company selling small numbers of them, but is there anywhere I can get quite a few (20 or so) without breaking the bank?

 

Any other tips on where to get caching supplies?

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Dave

[+Team Hippo]

You could always make up your own magnetic micros. Empty 35mm film canisters are available free by the carrier bag from any processing high street chemist, and suitable small, powerful magnets are always available on eBay - I just got another 20 which snugly fit the inside of a film canister for under a fiver including postage.

 

All you need to buy then is a dispenser of silcone bath sealant to join the two. While the results are not entirly waterproof , they're better that most of the key-safes I've seen, and far, far cheaper.

[+third-degree-witch]

I agree with Happy Hippo..Key Safes are awful, Let the water in terribly...think 'dry' and you wont go wrong

[+purple_pineapple]

i had thought of the film canisters (I have loads at home already, use them for storing salt, pepper etc when camping) but wasn't sure about buying the right size magnet and fixing that in place. I may well do that though! Thanks HH - do you have more details of the magnet seller?

 

Dave

 

Another thought could be permanently fixing the lid of a micro to something, and cachers just remove the bottom part. Would that be allowed, and is it practical?

[+Mad H@ter]

I scavenge my magnets from old computer hard drives, but if you haven't got a ready supply of hard drives I'm told that the magnets from PowerMagnetStore are excellent

[+allieballie]

I bought a magnetic key safe from a seller on eBay - cost me about £4 plus p&p. A few weeks later I saw them being sold in a packet of "three for £1" at one of our local "quids in" shops. Grrr.......

 

Decided not to use them anyway, but I was interested to read about using silicon sealant to glue the magnets on. Is it quite effective then? More so than Bostik for example?

[Nediam]

.....but I was interested to read about using silicon sealant to glue the magnets on. Is it quite effective then? More so than Bostik for example?

The ones that I have seen seem to stick the magnet OK. The only problem is that a lot of people don't score or scratch the surface of the canister. This results, quite often, in the adhesive and magnet becoming loose inside the container.

 

I'd recommend "roughing up" the inside of the canister with a bit of sandpaper or a file.

Edited October 14, 2005 by nediam

[+Learned Gerbil]

Bath sealant is designed to stick with a waterproof seal to non pourous things like enamel, steel, tiles etc. As such it works well at holding magnets to plastic.

[markandlynn]

Id also recomend using no more nails instead of silicone sealant. Once its set try squeezing the tube to see if its held. and yes as above make sure the surface is roughed up a bit first. We glue the magnets inside.

[+Pharisee]

I've used various methods of 'gluing' magnets with varying success. If you're sticking them to a flexible plastic container, i.e. Tupperware then you need an adhesive that sets/cures to a flexible solid otherwise it will crack off the first time you flex the box. If you're sticking them to a rigid container then the flexibility of the adhesive is not so important.

'Keying' the surface is very important however and also making sure it's dust and grease free. I clean the surfaces with lighter fuel (the petroleum ether sort, not the butane gas!!) before applying the 'glue'.

One of my recent caches is a 1.1/2 litre Lock & Lock box with two powerful magnets from an old disk drive attached. The box was placed on a steel sheet and the magnets placed inside the box but stuck to the steel plate. I then poured in enough two part polyurethane 'potting compound' to cover the magnets. (No... it's not the stuff you put in flower pots, at least, not if you want your plants to survive ). I'd screwed a couple of short self tappers through the bottom of the box to act as a key before pouring in the 'stuff'. That seemed to work well.

[+Alibags]

Another thought could be permanently fixing the lid of a micro to something, and cachers just remove the bottom part. Would that be allowed, and is it practical?

I have seen this done and have done it myself however do not underestimate the ability of the rampaging geocacher to pull your micro off whatever it has been affixed to in their eagerness to get hold of it. I had one attached to a tree and all they had to do was remove the bottom half, but cachers destroyed several branches of the tree and my micro too in the process to retrieving it.

[+allieballie]

I've come across a micro attached by velcro - one strip on the container, the other on a solid object. Have also seen micros where the lids/top half of the containers were attached to objects with wire or cable ties, and you had to remove the bottom half of the container only.

[+Learned Gerbil]

Id also recomend using no more nails instead of silicone sealant. Once its set try squeezing the tube to see if its held. and yes as above make sure the surface is roughed up a bit first. We glue the magnets inside.

The problem with no more nails is that as it says on the packaging, it is not designed to fix things that get wet. I used it to glue a thin metal sheet to a wooden wall where rats had gnawed their way in. The sheet stayed about two months before the damp rotted the no more nails. Now them eta lsheet is wedged in place by the spring from an old footpump - and it is just as effective as no more nails!

[+Team Hippo]

- do you have more details of the magnet seller?

 

If you go into ebay UK and carry out a search on 'disc magnets' it will come up with a number of suppliers. Sort through to select the size you want. Not all sellers seem to be advertising all the time, so its a question of picking a suitable supplier (with a good rating) who is selling at the time you want them.