If items you want to bury are too wide for our 6-inch-diameter models, you may have to step up to our largest-diameter BURY 'EM! tube. Because the volume is almost twice that of our 6L model we included four Mylar liners (one double liner is not quite big enough) and two lengths of cotton tubing to line the Mylar. This model is considerably heavier due to the greater wall thickness of the PVC pipe and fittings. We even doubled up on cotton parts bags and cord leashes, 10 bags and 6 leashes for each Mylar liner.
BURY 'EM! 8L kit contains 1 pressure-tested 8-inch PVC tube 4 olive drab military Mylar bags 12"x60" 2 knit fabric sleeve (makes two sleeves joined at bottom), 7” x 96" 20 cloth drawstring bags 6" x 10" 12 colored cord leashes for bags 1 sealed bag O2 absorber packets (Open only at last moment.) 2 alcohol cleaning pads
The BE-8L model uses an expanding neoprene rubber stopper, tightened by means of a wing nut. All original stopper metal parts were replaced with stainless steel for long-term underground exposure.
Open end of tube was reinforced to double thickness to avoid any possibility of stress cracking from tightening expansion plug.
Because expansion plugs are only designed to prevent water or air from escaping past their inner surface we modify them to discourage moisture from getting into the plug from the outside.
We made a tight-fitting neoprene washer to fit over the stainless steel bolt on the outside of the expansion plug, covered with a stainless steel washer, then we heavily waxed the bolt threads.
However, should any moisture enter the plug, the combination of the expansion ring and the neoprene gasket under the carriage bolt head on the inside will prevent air or moisture from entering.
Tools needed non-stick-surfaced clothes iron broomstick, thick dowel, or narrow wood scrap scissors pliers to tighten or loosen wing nut vacuum cleaner 3 - 4 plastic five-gallon buckets tarps or sheets of heavy-gage plastic shovel, hatchet for roots, other digging tools rope to make carrying strap or lash to carrying pole
During turbulent economic and political times it makes good sense to keep caches of important items in hidden locations away from your home. Properly used, your BURY ‘EM! tube can boost your chances of accessing a backup supply of essential emergency items in case your home position is compromised.
Your BURY ‘EM! 8L tube will hold 5 to 7 weeks’ worth of dry, concentrated food (minimal air space) for one person, or shelter and clothing items, valuables, first aid materials, or a variety of emergency and survival tools and equipment.
Despite the multiple layers of protection provided in your BURY ‘EM! tube kit, you should select non-perishable emergency items that are corrosion proof or as corrosion resistant as possible, composed of plastics, ceramics, and/or stainless steel or other corrosion-resistant metals. Make sure any large items will fit into the tube with room to spare so cloth bags full of smaller accessory items can be added if desired.
1. Empty BURY ‘EM! tube of all parts.
2. Lubricate any metal parts of your emergency items for storage. No lubricants are included with kit because of highly variable individual preference ranging from use of light oils and silicone sprays to heavy oils and grease.
3. Wrap any large items with plenty of cloth padding to eliminate any hard or sharp points that could wear on or puncture Mylar liners. Insert into provided cotton tubing. Twist tubing one complete turn and invert to achieve second wrap. With hands washed clean of lubricants, place fabric-wrapped large item(s) into Mylar bag with narrowest end facing the opening so bags of smaller items may be more easily added and removed. Be careful not to get any lubricant on Mylar liner openings so they can be properly heat-sealed.
4. Loosely fill cotton parts bags with any smaller items, lubricated if needed. (Make sure not to lubricate things for which lubrication is not recommended, food, clothing, and ammunition.) Provide extra wrapping for any hard, sharp, or pointed objects. Cinch and tie drawstrings and secure cord leashes to filled bags. Cloth bags are to protect Mylar from puncture and leashes will enable you to easily withdraw the twelve deepest bags once BURY ‘EM! tube is opened. Use doubled-over fabric sleeve inside of Mylar liner for extra protection and fill with full cotton bags, beginning with leashed bags and being sure to keep sleeve opening or leash ends from slipping down into tube.
Caution: The more items you add, the heavier your tube will be to transport. Will you need help getting it to your burial site? Will you need help retrieving it when you decide it's time to unearth it? Plan accordingly. You might consider using several of our smaller tubes to spread load out.
5. If there is additional space and BURY 'EM! tube feels light enough, consider adding other emergency items (small tools, first aid supplies, rain poncho, protein bars, fire starter, etc.) If more than 20 cloth bags are needed, select something from your sock drawer that you can fill. Allow at least two-inch space at mouth of tube; do not overfill.
6. If you think any lubricant may have gotten on inside of Mylar liner openings, cleanse with tissue, then soapy sponge, then rinsed sponge, then with enclosed alcohol cleaning pad. Allow to dry thoroughly. A perfect heat seal is essential. If you are double-bagging, you will have to cut outer Mylar liner down to a few inches shorter than inner one so that inner liner can be sealed, then folded down inside outer one to make room for outer liner to be heat-sealed.
7. Plug in your non-stick-surfaced clothes iron and turn to "wool" setting. Have thick dowel, narrow board, or broomstick ready. When iron is hot, make short test seam near one bag opening to see at what speed iron should travel to make good seal. (You will make actual seal closer to bag contents.)
8. With your vacuum cleaner plugged in and ready to go, open sealed bag of O2 absorbers and divide them up between both Mylar liners (inner liners if you are double-bagging) . They will begin absorbing oxygen immediately.
9. Quickly suck air out of one Mylar liner with vacuum cleaner (inner liner first if you are double-bagging), flatten open end across dowel or broomstick leaving no wrinkles and run iron across the liner. Make seal wider by advancing the dowel or broom stick a little further out from initial heat seam. Once assured of good seam, use scissors to trim off excess Mylar beyond seam, fold and depress into tube or outer liner. Repeat with second liner and you are almost ready to close up your BURY ‘EM! tube.
10. Once all liners are sealed you will need to pack top of tube with enough padding to keep contents from shifting and slamming into expansion plug during transportation and burial. Mylar is an impressive membrane but cannot stand up to hammer blows it could suffer from load shifting. If you have wisely not made a 150-pound monster of your BURY 'EM! tube, you may want to use plastic packing "peanuts" to thoroughly fill empty spaces inside. (Bubble wrap is not recommended because cells could pop.) If expansion plug cannot be forced in all the way before tightening wing nut, simply remove some plastic peanuts and try again.
Depending on how big, heavy, hard, sharp, or pointed an item is that you want to enclose and bury you may have to thoroughly wrap it with cloth padding so it doesn't wear or puncture Mylar liner.
This shows a well-wrapped rifle with mounted scope ready to insert into Mylar liner.
Oxygen absorber packets are tossed into Mylar liners just before sucking air out with vacuum cleaner and sealing it shut with clothes iron. The ten pictured here will each absorb 400cc of oxygen, way more than needed. Your kit may contain fifteen 100cc packets.
Here you see the Mylar liner compressed around the protectively wrapped rifle, the result of running the vacuum cleaner on "tool" setting with the wand stuck into the bag. The clothes iron is positioned to show where the heat seal would be made, close to the muzzle end of the rifle.
A caution on vacuum suction: If the wand is not far enough in, the liner will collapse on itself and prevent the rest of the trapped air from being evacuated.
Once the Mylar liner has been heat-sealed it can be inserted into a second liner for double protection and the vacuum and heat-sealing process repeated.
Mylar liner is heat-sealed slowly with non-stick-surfaced clothes iron. On "wool" setting it is hot enough to weld together the inner polyethylene layers without damaging the outer polyester layer.
If burying one or more large/long/rigid items, you will probably fill and seal bag(s) outside the tube and then lower onto the rag padding in the bottom of the tube. If one or more bags are to be stuffed with small items in the cotton parts bags, it would work best to fill the bag(s) inside the tube.
After snipping off excess with scissors, each bag is folded and tucked down into top of BURY ‘EM! tube.
1. If full tube has been topped off with plastic packing peanuts or other soft materials (but not bubblewrap) to keep load from shifting inside BURY 'EM! tube, it's time to insert and tighten expansion plug.
Tube is topped off with just enough plastic packing peanuts to compress firmly when the expansion plug is forced in. Make sure the plug is all the way in and stays in as you tighten the wing nut.
2. Make sure plug flange is pressed all the way down onto tube rim, then begin tightening the wing nut. Once you have it as tight as you can comfortably get by hand, use a pair of pliers to exhert a little more force on it to make certain of a good, strong seal. Remember to take pliers with you when you unearth your BURY 'EM! tube.
The original hardware for the expansion plug included a wingnut with extra-long wings but all we could find in stainless steel were normal-sized wings. For this reason we recommend using pliers or some other tool to tighten and loosen the plug. Pictured is a multi-tool being used for this function, an item that many preparedness-minded people normally carry on their person. You might also manage with a pair of heavy gloves or strong, tough hands.
If you decide to use a larger tool for tightening, be careful not to apply too much pressure. This pipe wrench could break the wing nut or crack the plug's plastic components if forced sufficiently.
Realize that anything metal buried in your yard or hidden in your wall or attic can be easily located with a good metal detector. Therefore you should select an off-site location that is free from prying eyes as you dig and bury, a site also unlikely to be bulldozed or washed away by flooding and where children are unlikely to dig and metal-detectors are unlikely to be used. (Beaches, old foundations or train tracks, and empty city lots may not be good sites.) Select a spot that aligns with permanent features so you can relocate it easily.
If you don't go crazy loading your BE-8L tube, a rope carrying strap can be devised for transporting it to its location. This one was wrapped with a rag for padding, then wrapped with OD tape.
But if you cram a lot of heavy stuff in there, your loaded BURY ‘EM! tube may feel like it’s full of lead! Consider using a sturdy golf bag caddy or garden cart to wheel it to its destination. An alternative is to recruit a strong, trusted assistant, lash the tube up close to a carrying pole (a 2x4 might do), and you and your assistant each shoulder one end of the pole.. Make sure you are unobserved on the way to your burial site.
Folding GI shovel, hatchet, sheets of plastic or small tarps can be carried inside 5-gallon plastic buckets or knapsack.
1. Spread two tarps to protect the surface from telltale soil spillage and position several plastic buckets on them to load with excavated topsoil.
2. Remove ground litter carefully as if it were puzzle pieces and arrange it on one tarp, to be replaced afterward.
3. Carefully dig up and transfer leaf mold/topsoil layer to the buckets and load deeper layers of soil and rocks onto other tarp until you have a hole of the right size and depth. Your BURY ‘EM! tube should be covered by no less than a foot of soil. Two feet would be safer in case of fire.
4. Place BURY ‘EM! tube in hole and backfill. Tamp the earth well as you bury so soil will not settle and leave a telltale depression.
5. Replace topsoil then surface debris to disguise your burial site.
6. Load excess soil into buckets and fold tarps carefully so no soil particles are left on top of surface as evidence of burial location. Dump buckets full of earth a good distance away where it won't be noticed.
Be very careful not to attract attention in returning to the site. Unless you have gone to unearth the BURY ‘EM! tube and retrieve its contents, inspect the location from some distance away without stopping so that anyone following you will not deduce the location of your buried cache.
Hole ready for BURY ‘EM! tube. Note top layer of leaves placed on upper left tarp and soil and rocks piled on lower right tarp.
This product is offered in good faith to assist with family emergency preparedness but carries no warranty against loss from fire, moisture, theft, or animal damage, especially because user application cannot be controlled. Store all items at your own risk.
In case any portion of this procedure becomes outlawed for any item or items, do not follow it. For public safety reasons firearm burial is specifically not recommended.
For public safety reasons firearm burial is specifically not recommended. How about a bunch of BB guns instead? The BE-8L model is very roomy inside.
The pictured rifle with scope mounted (but magazine removed) fit just fine with room for another one just like it right alongside.
BURY 'EM! 8L kit contains
If you don't go crazy loading your BE-8L tube, a rope carrying strap can be devised for transporting it to its location. This one was wrapped with a rag for padding, then wrapped with OD tape.
