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The other day, my wife and I went to a flee market near her parent’s house. We happen to stumble onto some ammo boxes. They were fairly cheap, but we passed on them. But since then, I’ve thought of various ways to recycle used ammo boxes. For instance when I was a kid, my family used them as tool boxes. Until I was old enough to know better, I thought they were just tool boxes. They’re very easy to find. Your local military surplus store should have them cheap. Below are some of the ways you can reuse these useful boxes.

1. Geocaching Container

From time to time, my friends and I like to geocache (GPS treasure hunting). We’ve seen a lot of different containers. The weather proof properties of an ammo box make for awesome geocache containers. In fact the first cache, my wife and I found was concealed in an ammo box. However as “brdad” of the Maine Geocaching Forum pointed out, ammo boxes by their nature look dangerous. After all who wants to open a box marked “grenades” or could possibly contain explosives. With some modifications, you can make an ammo container a little more suitable for using as a geocache container. Check out brdad’s post on the Maine Geocaching Forum to see how you can take the scary out of your next ammo box geocache container.

http://www.geocachingmaine.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1637

2. Military Themed Computer Case

PC gaming is more than just about spending hours in front of the box playing games. It can also be about building custom PCs to stand out your neighborhood LAN Party. I’ve seen a lot of interesting gaming rigs out on the net. But how cool it would be to base a build off an ammo box. After a Google search, I found a project where someone had done it. Guy Pracy of the mini-itx.com forum started with a .50 caliber ammo box and made a ultra portable PC. All the hardware components fit in the case well. The lid pops up and off to reveal all the ports and fans. This makes for very quick deployment solider! The system board is based off the small ITX form factor. There are not a lot of high-end gaming components made for the ITX. But never the less it’s cool. Check it out, from the link below.

http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/ammobox/

3. Fireworks Controller Box

This last one may not be for everyone. But I thought it was pretty cool. Gareth Branwyn from the Makezine.com site, posted about fireworks controller box based off an ammo box. The box holds the switches and the battery power to drive the fireworks ignition system. There is some room left to store some cabling as well. The box can easily be deployed to the “blast” site and kept a safe distance away.This same design could easily adapted for an amateur rockery control box as well. My cousin CJ has made similar controllers for that sport. I think an ammo box would make a awesome looking housing for any type of control panel. Not to mention that it would be very rugged.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/07/ammo_box_fireworks_controller.html

Well we’ve shown what you can do with a used ammo box. So what are you going to build now?

Found a video about Geocaching on YouTube this morning. For those who are not familiar Geocaching, this is a great video. They show what “equipment” is needed. While also explaining the full process of finding a cache.You’ll find this video,  instructional and some what funny. Great work by a group of high school students.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bii-n2JLpWg

Had a nice long weekend to enjoy. Got to go out and do some Geocaching! What’s Geocaching? In a nutshell, its a high tech scavenger hunt, involving GPS systems. The quest is to find treasure or “cache”. You go to a website that lists all the caches in your area. Each cache has rough GPS coordinates. The coordinates take you to the treasure. Different caches have different “treasures.” Sometimes the treasure is just the trip itself. Its a great way to get out and enjoy the great outdoors. I’ll have the website links at the end of the post for you. Also watch my blog for more details about this great hobby.

So, I took Friday off  and we all met up in Morehead, KY. Our friend Shawna’s sister is having a baby. The girls stayed busy all weekend setting up the baby shower. So while the girls were out doing this, Bobby (Shawna’s future husband) and I began our quest. The first cache led us to the Morehead Recycling Center. However we didn’t find the cache right away. A lady came by and asked if we were on a cache hunt. She kept dropping hints as to where it may have been. We felt she may have been the cache owner. We gave up after a few attempts and moved on to the next cache.

The next cache proved to be much easier. We found it within 10 minutes. Snapped some pictures and went on to the next one. We quickly learned the GPS is going to be off a little bit off in most cases. So we trained ourselves to keep a watch full eye. The next two caches were micro caches (usually just a log book). The following one was attached to an old abandon bridge off US 60 near Farmers, KY. Bobby and I have driven by this location hundreds of times, and have never noticed it. We also stopped at an old school house that was converted into a antique/consignment shop. Then off to the next cache, near some signage about the history of the Farmers, KY. Then we went back to the recycling center for another go. We found it on the second time around. Full day of Geocaching was exciting. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures to show you soon. That night we all stayed in Morehead and just hung out. Watched the movie Dodge Ball again. Remember “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” That movie doesn’t get old.

The next morning we headed out to Richmond, KY. After we got settled, we headed out for some more caching. It started poring the rain. We sat and let it pass. The first cache we didn’t find. It was a little wet out, so hunting did prove to be a little harder then normal. We found a total of 3 caches before dinner. Some of the caches required stealth, due to non-geocachers or muggles present. The last cache that day seemed to be the best of the weekend. We found the cache without drawing attention. Felt like we were members of a secretive treasure hunters. Bobby and I were like the characters from National Treasure, Ben Gates and Riley Poole. That night we ate at Cracker Barrel. Thanks to Shawna’s parents for providing the meal.

Sunday afternoon came, and Bob and I decided to try our hand at caching in Lexington, KY. That didn’t prove to go so well. Some of the caches were either missing or really hard to find. We only found one cache out of the few we planed for. Started to wonder if someone had been before us and swiped the caches. Never the  less we had fun. I would recommend Geocaching. We’re fairly new to the hobby, but I’ll pass on what we’ve come to know in a later posts. Till then, stay on the trail and don’t get lost!

Offical Geocaching Website

Beginners Guide to Geocaching