The memorial, ready today
Umm — The Memorial Case
- One Apache 4800 weatherproof case (interior 17⅞ × 12⅞ × 6⅝ in, polypropylene, O-ring gasket, padlock points) holding every person's sealed artifacts — labeled, dry, and out the door in one hand.
- Inside ride the sixteen clear PCA inner cases — one case per person, name on the end, each holding that person's flat artifacts, while the urns lie together in their own foam bay.
- The case itself is padlocked shut through its lock points; it lives on a shelf in a dry interior closet behind a keyed door, and the desiccant inside gives it its own climate.
Apache 4800 · Harbor Freight #64250 — gasket-sealed, padlockable, about $60.
PCA Photo Storage Box 4 × 6, 16 Inner Keeper — sixteen latching cases; the outer carry box is not used.
The plan — one flats-case per person, urns in their bay · up to 16 people
A shallow case cannot take the urn, so the split is: one case per person for the flats — foil pouch flat on the floor, glassines on top, tokens in a glassine — and all urns lying together in a foam-gridded bay along the case's end, each urn engraved and labeled. Four stacks of four cases; the bay holds up to 21 lying urns.
Top view, to scale. Four stacks of flats-cases, and the urn bay along the end.
Side section. Base pad, four cases high, an inch of air under the lid foam — a fifth case does not fit, which is the arithmetic behind sixteen people.
Inside one person's case. The foil-pouched card flat on the floor, the glassine envelopes on top, the small tokens in a glassine of their own.
The exact parts
Ordered direct, at their prices. No link here earns us a commission.
| Part | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Umm — The Memorial Case: the Apache 4800 | $59.99 | About $60 at Harbor Freight (item 64250), gasket-sealed and padlockable. Add a desiccant canister and a hygrometer — about $45 together |
| PCA Photo Storage Box 4 × 6, 16 Inner Keeper | $25.99 | Sixteen clear latching cases — one per person, name label on the end. The outer carry box is not used |
| Rechargeable desiccant canister | ≈$20 | Lives inside the seal; recharge it when its indicator turns |
| Data-logging hygrometer | ≈$25 | The instrument that says whether the closet is behaving |
All of it, roughly $85.98 + ≈$45
⚠ about $131 for a family of up to sixteen · third-party prices, theirs and subject to change
The foam
The case's own pick-and-pluck. Set the four case-stacks and the urn grid on the foam, trace, pluck the wells along the scored lines, leave one-cube walls. Pluck conservatively: cubes come out in seconds and go back in never. A manifest card in the lid names every case and every urn — the packaging is the packing list, and an empty well names what is missing.
The other memorial pieces
- The laser-etched crystal ≈$109 A standalone shelf display piece — it does not go inside the case. See its guide for getting the photograph right
- The SecuriGene capsule $389.00 The one thing that cannot be done after a funeral — cremation destroys DNA. See its guide
- The engraved token urn $20.90 + $22.00 engraving Solid brass inside, threaded lid, factory engraving — see the urn guide for the material rule and the sealing rule
Why a case and not furniture
Enclosure beat display. Nobody wants the DNA on show; a fireproof safe is chronically humid inside, which is the wrong air for paper and DNA; and a sealed case can leave the house in one hand if it ever has to. A family that wants furniture instead can take the Memorial Cabinet path — the same things, in drawers.