About 12 years ago, I adopted a Geobituary (GCJQGP), a puzzle cache published in 2004. The puzzle was, unfortunately, ambiguous, and there was no checker. The container (a mini-tombstone) and its location adjacent to a city cemetery were fantastic. When I adopted it, the container was in bad shape from the weather. I sought out to build a new one from scratch.
Not having done this before, I thought it would make sense to frame the tombstone “top” out of wood cut into roughly semicircles. I Filled in the gap with some random wood bits, then screwed it laterally, then through the steel moderate-sized ammo box lid.
To smooth it and give it a “stone”-like appearance, I applied Bondo, used for car body repair, around the exterior and into the gaps.
The last time I’d worked with Bondo was 40 years ago rebuilding a car body. I’d forgotten how quickly it sets.
I sanded the base lightly and applied a similar layer of Bondo on it. Note to self #1: painter’s tape does not work very well on this application because Bondo is too hard. Note to self #2: The base is going to wear the quickest. (See October 2024 photo) If I did this again, a wrap would be appropriate.
I did some light sanding to smooth out the blobby bits, then let it cure for a couple of days. I painted the entire thing with a white appliance acrylic, then added stencils for the Geocaching logo and stickers for RIP. The name, was a little hard to read. Finally, I added a miniature foam skull for “George Cachinski” and tethered it to the top. It’s “not scary” and people seem to be having fun with it.
The top has held up very well. The wear on the base started right away, but has largely been stable for the last several years.
It got a lot of traffic during the belated 20th Anniversary of Geocaching celebration, as people stopped in Issaquah for food (and a cache) after spending time getting the Ape Cache to the east.
