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How Do You Clean Your Ammo Cans?


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I searched the forums, and couldn't turn anything up so I bring my question to you, good and helpful geocachers of the world.

 

I bought a few ammo cans and a decon container for caches, the all have some brown crusty stuff in them, mostly dirt as far as I can tell.

What I want to know is how you clean your containers before placement.

 

Soap and water, and a washcloth, brillo pad, sponge?

 

Any special solutions or materials to share?

 

Thanks in advance for the help. :)

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Navel jelly on the rusted areas. Hose it off after an hour or so.

 

Hard wire (wheel) that fits in a hand-held power drill. (Saves A LOT on effort) This gets off most loose paint and then some.

 

A couple good coatings of Rust-Oleum 'Rusty Metal' Primer (Brown). Let it dry a couple days (or more).

 

Rust-Oleum Green paint.

 

Give it several days to cure into a hard shell.

Edited by BlueDeuce
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Sounds like some folks go through a lot of effort to prepare a cache container! They do make it nice when you find one where the hider went through the effort to make it pretty.

 

Topic shift: Have you seen the tupperware containers after someone has tried to cammo it? The ones we find in the desert aren't too pretty after a couple weeks of 120+ temperatures.

 

Edit: remove redundancy.

Edited by Moose Mob
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Start at the surplus store, all ammo cans are not equal. I pick throught the pallet and select the cleanest, rust free cans. Next check the seal, I have seen the seal in conditions ranging from bad to completly missing. Open and close the can a few times to make sure it isn't bent or warped.

 

After that soap and water do the trick. Living in the desert I don't worry about a little surface rust on the outside. I also don't prime the flat OD is primer enough.

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I've never had to clean one (yet). The few that I have purchased were from a dept. store so they were very clean. I did paint over the ammo description on the side of the box. Had I needed to... I would have taken a wire brush and soap and water to the box. The dish washer (already mentioned) is a good idea as well.

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I've never had to clean one (yet). The few that I have purchased were from a dept. store so they were very clean. I did paint over the ammo description on the side of the box. Had I needed to... I would have taken a wire brush and soap and water to the box. The dish washer (already mentioned) is a good idea as well.

Dude get thee to an Army Navy store! Besides the standard ammo cans they have all kinds of nifty stuff.

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My local source for ammo cans seems to thing that they should be oiled. So I start with a good wipe down with acetone. This if followed by what every cleaning to remove tape and other stuff from the surfaces. After that it is usually a quick sanding of the entire surface that I will be painting, I do not try to remove any markings. If there is rust I do wire brush and sand it off. This is followed by an undercoat paint (both inside and outside of the can) as needed. I remove the lid for the painting. I use these cans for things beyond geocaches so once they are primered I will make any modification to the can and once again if there is bare metal I reprime the exposed metal. I then base coat and paint as needed, camo for caches and other depending on what for. If the can has been sitting around a while I usually give it a wipe down with acetone before painting, I do not worry too much about dust and don’t use a tack cloth.

 

And as always your milage will vary. <_<

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