We had a great day caching out in Chelmsford yesterday. The aim of the day was to get 24 caches to reach our 500th find and we did it 
Very happy!
Looking very pleased with our 500th find!
We also got some shopping on before hand and stocked up on some waterproof trousers and watertite shoes (Modelled in pic above! Hehe!). Now if we go camping and it rains then we can still cache without me moaning too much that I’m soaked 
We also stocked up on some cache supplies. Small notebooks from Wilkinsons are 11p each and a big pack of pencils 17p.
After the shopping we started on a few random cache locations here and there. We knew we were going to do a combination of 2 trails that overlapped containing a total of 18 caches. We therefore grabbed the 6 and then went onto the trail. Luckily we found all 18 and got that all important 500th find
It was a great trail with lovely footpaths and easy finds, but the real highlight was the containers! They were all black plastic boxes. At first I thought they were just different containers that the owner had managed to get hold of but on closer inspection they had “lock and lock” written on the top so they were indeed Tupperware! The paint wasn’t flaking off at all like you often see on painted caches. It was smooth and genuinely looked like a black box.
I emailed the cache owner (qichina) and asked what paint they had used. They told me it was your usual spray paint from Halfords but the secret was first coating the box in a rather nasty chemical called xylene. It’s a paint thinner which removes the resin from the box allowing the paint to stick. A quick google showed me that it burns your skin so you need to wear chemical resistant gloves (think I can pick these up from work) and use a rag to apply it to the box. After that you can paint it. So being the curious type I ordered a 1 litre can from eBay for £7 and am going to delay the trail that I was planning to hide so that I can get the boxes painted and looking good! What a great tip and I was really pleased that the nice cache owner was kind enough to let me in on it!
July 27, 2010 at 6:42 pm
[...] I discovered the secret to keeping paint on your containers… Xylene. Read my blog post here to discover how you can do [...]
May 25, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Very interesting tip regarding the use of Xylene!
Have you got any further with your painting and if so was it easy to apply, did you have to wait for it to dry before applying the paint?
May 25, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Hi Neil,
I usually xylene in the afternoon and leave it to dry over night then paint the next day. It gives a good affect and I’ve only found that paint chips on the folds on the tubs, but on the faces of the tubs it stays. More expensive spray paint holds better, but I picked up a can from poundland and although it’s a bit drippy and the finish isnt as smooth it looks fine!
Hope this helps!
Cass
May 25, 2011 at 1:47 pm
It does thank you!
September 11, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Thanks for the tip on Xylene as I had wondered how the paint stuck to the tupperware boxes. You can buy Xylene from Toolstation so I will pick some up next time I am passing as this will be a lot cheaper than buying camouflage tape.
December 16, 2011 at 12:10 pm
If you don’t want to play with chemicals, you can always give the containers a quick sand with some medium sand paper. I have found that this works and the paint stay put