D20 Project (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

Oh, don’t get me wrong… It was sturdy just the way it was, but as this thing was coming together I decided to give it a different purpose than “sitting on my desk in the guest bedroom, occasionally being moved to the attic by the embarrassed wife whenever we had visitors”.

It would need to be much stronger if it was going to spend the rest of its life outside in the elements as a Geocache like I now hoped.  Really, a lot of the inspiration for using it this way came from an awesome cache I found a few months ago.  See, someone had taken a full-sized mailbox, camo-painted it, and mounted it on a pole in a park about 50 feet off a hiking trail (the actual cache was inside).  Before I knew it was there it was totally invisible - now that I know it’s there I can’t not see it when I hike that trail.

I didn’t want to paint the wood, so I stained the main structure dark then I glued tapered dowels (stained a lighter color) in the gaps (well… with the exception of the “20”… more on that in a bit) like you see in the pic. 

After considering a variety of ways to neatly stencil and rout the numbers I decided in the end just to do them freehand to give the die a “Oh, I meant to do that” rough-hewn look – quicker, good enough, and way less error-prone, you see. So I just used a Dremmel to carve the numbers (using a real d20 as a template for number placement and orientation) and stained them the same color as the dowels.  I think it turned out ok.

I carefully pried the “20” off the main structure and epoxied a surplus water bottle to the underside of the triangle.  After the epoxy had set, the water bottle was covered in camouflage duct tape to obscure the corporate logo and the bright red plastic.  I drilled a hole in the triangle and mounted an extra cupboard door knob to it.  The remaining dowels were then epoxied to this triangle and the “lid” was finished.  

I weatherproofed the die with several coats of gloss spar sealant – the type of sealant used to protect the wooden parts of some boats.  The actual cache is meant to be the water bottle itself which should keep its contents dry well beyond the expected lifetime of the mostly-cedar container (a year or two would be pretty good).

I used a 4-foot piece of aluminum pole and three extra shelf brackets I had laying around to create the stand for this and the whole thing was camo-ed like you see in the pic.  The stand will be hammered two feet into the ground which should make it stable, keep it elevated off the forest floor, and still leave enough room to use a cordless drill to secure the die in place.

Done and done.  But here’s the rub. 

I scouted out a couple of promising locations, my favorite being one about 300 feet off a main hiking path in a really nice park in the area.  Even though I think it would be neat to use this as a Geocache container, and though I have no problem with going out to the spot and installing it, I am really not overly interested in being its CO (cache owner).  

There are a few reasons for this – none too big or important.  

1. Getting a permit for the park I looked at would require me to take off from work (the person who approves them only works Monday through Friday).
2. The park I mentioned is a 40-minute drive from my house so getting to it to provide maintenance, change the log, etc, would be kind of a hassle.  
3. I use my phone’s GPS which can be pretty bouncy in the woods on the best of days and I want to make sure I give precise coordinates. Nothing worse than spending 30 minutes looking for something in the brambles that turns out to be 100 feet from where it should be, you know?  
4. I am only a “basic” member, and, apparently, there are Geocaches out there that are only visible to “premium” members.  Why should that affect me?  Well, let’s say I scout out the location, take off from work, get the permit filled out and signed, install the cache, and submit the cache for official review.  A couple of days later I get an email from the reviewer saying that the location is denied because it is too close to one of these “premium” caches I had no idea existed.  The whole process would need to be repeated… Of course… I guess I could just spend the $30/year…

Like I said, minor stuff.  Borderline whiny, even.

I may end up changing my mind about all that and taking on the CO job myself but in the meantime I think I will ask around the Hampton Roads area to see if any local Geocachers might be interested in using this as their own container.  I will keep you posted either way.  In the meantime, it sits in my garage.

(To be continued?)