My thoughts on caches:
The caches I've made have all been similar to one another in design, if not contents. I always wanted to recover the bucket so I had something to carry the items in once recovered, in case I didn't have any transport or LBE when I needed the cache.
The way I do it is a bit more expensive and labor intensive getting the cache put in than most, but much easier and faster to recover than the way some do it, which is better than the other way around, I think.
So here goes, for an earth buried bucket cache. A tubular cache container will be about the same. Scout out a likely spot and monitor it for a few weeks or months to make sure it won't likely be discovered by accident. Make sure there is a spot some distance away where you can cache a couple of things, just under the surface of the ground. Once you are confident that the place is secure enough, make sure you have what you need.
Bag up the items, even the canned ones, in 2-gallon heavy duty Zip-lock freezer bags and stack things as tightly as you can. If it is a food cache, be sure and include everything you will need to use that food. Including a can opener for sure. But I'd put in a knife/fork/spoon, folding handle cup with water bottle, water filter, a solid fuel or gel fuel folding stove if needed. I would also have as much water as would fit in the bucket to fill it up completely.
Once the bucket is packed, keeping it as light as possible, seal the lid with silicone. Use two smaller buckets that are easily carried, rather than one larger, heavier bucket if you need more space.
Have a second, nesting, bucket for each cache bucket you have made up. Find something to put in the empty bucket that will support the cache bucket just shy of being a glove fit when inserted into the empty bucket.
Get a good pick and shovel, plus a small shovel or e-tool, which should be oiled and put in a zip-lock bag; several more buckets or boxes, and fill them with good, clean, dry mortar sand. Get some heavy duty clear plastic sheeting and head for the cache point sometime when it will be very unlikely for anyone to see or come up on you while burying the cache.
Now this is where I do things rather different than most. Move any surface material away carefully before digging. When you dig the hole, make it two good shovel widths larger all around than the diameter of the bucket, especially if you want to recover everything.
Once you are deep enough to have the buckets at least 6" and preferably 12" to 18" below the level of the ground, put in the empty bucket and carefully fill around it with some of the sand until it is stable. Put in the support and then the cache bucket. Make sure it will slide in and out easily. Fill the rest of the hole up to within 6" of the top. Spread out the plastic sheet, digging the hole wider if it is likely to flood or get a lot of rain in the area, so the plastic covers well past the edges of the bucket. Add a bit more sand, making sure none of the plastic shows above it, and finish filling the hole with the dirt that was dug out. Do not leave a depression, but you also don't want a mound. Just enough to allow for a little settling.
Load up the extra buckets/boxes used to bring out the sand with the rest of the dirt and haul it off so there is nothing left indicating a hole was dug. Carefully camouflage the area, replacing any surface materials you moved before digging.
Record the location, using coded instructions, on a coded map. Take the small shovel or e-tool to a spot nearby where you can cache it just a few inches below the surface of the ground. Drop a sawn off piece of broom handle, sharpened slightly on one end nearby, on the surface of the ground.
If there might be a real problem relocating the cache, such as in a large open area, among really rocky areas, or any area with plain terrain features, bury a Neodymium rare earth magnet just under the surface of the ground, somewhere near the cache as an ‘anchor point’ from which measurements and bearings can be taken to relocate the cache. One simply walks the area, watching a compass needle. When close to one of these powerful magnets the compass needle will deflect and the magnet can be located. Then with the location of the actual cache determined.
When the time comes to recover the cache, middle of the night, blowing rain, trying to snow, with five guys and two mean dogs after you, recover the broomstick, dig up the trowel, scoop the thin layer of surface dirt free of the sheet plastic, scoop out the easy to move sand off the top of the cache bucket, down to where it is sitting in the bottom bucket. If enough room was left when the buckets were nested, the cache bucket should pull out of the bottom bucket easily. If there is too much space sand will have worked down and locked the two together. If not enough space is left, the compression of the bottom bucket will make it more difficult to get the cache bucket out. But it isn't that hard to hit the right medium.
Pull the bucket and if you have time, try to fill in the hole best you can, hoping it won't be discovered until too late so the pursuers don't know you recovered anything, or if it is obvious you did, not what it was in the cache.
Now, if you have plenty of time, and conditions aren't too bad, you can fairly easily recover the bottom, empty bucket, if you want. By having the hole a good shovel width around the bucket, filled with that dry, loose sand, it can be scooped out enough to pull out the empty bucket for future use. The main reason to use it is to make it easy to recover the cache bucket.
Another option, rather than just a brick or 2x4, or something to hold up the cache bucket, you can stash some additional supplies in it to do the same thing. If the cache is found, chances are the people won't dig out the bucket, not realizing how easy it is. Just get down to the lid and pull it off to get what is inside, leaving the remains of the bucket on top of the things in the bottom bucket.
You can carry that one step further, since getting the second bucket out isn't all that hard, and have some double bagged and wrapped items below the bottom bucket. Even if the cache bucket is found and pulled out, and anything in the bottom bucket, it would take someone as devious as me to keep digging to pull out that bottom bucket to see if there was anything else underneath.
An option, if it is going to be difficult to not be observed by chance, is if the site is at all suitable as a campsite, set up a fairly large tipi or other tent with no floor over the cache spot. You can do all the work without anyone seeing what you are doing. Just leave the surface of the ground in the same condition as it was when you set up the tipi and no one should be any the wiser. Carry out the excess dirt in the same buckets in which you brought the sand.
The basics of caching drums are very similar to those for bucket caches. But there are some differences. Here are some things specific to the drum caches (This refers to open top drums with sealable lids, not drums for liquids with bungs.):
First, 55-gallon drums are big and heavy. Think about using 30-gallon drums if you can find them.
Second, if you are planning to just dig down to the top of the drums, remove the tops, and recover the items, I would think about that twice. The drums will be a valuable asset in and of themselves in the PAW. Also, by recovering the drums and repacking the contents (if you have to unload them to recover), it will be much easier to move everything by simply rolling the barrel rather than moving all the individual components or containers.
To facilitate this, I would have rope sling bridles tied up, using rope impervious to the type of ground you have, that you can put under and around the drums. This will allow the easy use of a pickup truck hoist, or tripod to lower and then lift the drums from the hole.
Now, a shovel width all the way around a bucket is adequate. You will need somewhat more to be able to dig all the way around the drum and get deep enough to recover it. Either that, or you will need to make a scoop device specifically to get the sand from around the drum without having to get down into the hole with it, with would be the preferred method for me.
Now, to anchor the drums from floating/vibrating out of the ground, I would use a dead-man type anchor. If you use the method I describe below, you will have plenty of room to put down a circle of sheet goods such as plywood, scrap sheet metal, or even a built up sheet made from a double layer (crossed) of one by twos or whatever. Whatever you use will need to be round, as large as the hole, minus just a little to make it easy to get down there.
And similar to the sling bridle for the drums, put down two ropes, crossed in the middle of the hole, before you put down the dead-man. Install the drum on the center of the dead-man, place a pair of crossed two by twos on top of the drum and tie off the ropes to them. This way, for the barrel to come out of the ground, and it is likely due to the slick surface, not only the weight of the drum, but the entire weight and mass of the backfill will also have to come up, which is highly unlikely because of the additional weight and the friction of the sand against the sides of the hole.
As to protecting firearms and other important metallic objects, I would grease them up, and then slip them into silicon impregnated sleeves before putting them into Mylar or plastic sealed bag, with either an O2 absorbent or desiccant pack.
Just my opinion
List of types of caches:
01) Base camp cache
02) Bulk trade goods cache
03) Financial cache
04) Food preservation cache
05) Fuel/Automotive trade goods cache
06) Packaged trade goods cache
07) Reequip cache
08) Resupply cache
09) Simple supply cache
10) Tradesman’s tools cache
11) Travel route cache
12) Arms and ammunition cache
13) Small, medium, & large multipurpose caches
14) Retreat cache
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