Big Lebowski Urn How To

There is no right or wrong in terms of remembrance.  So if a coffee can feels right for you or a loved one, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.  The best funeral directors will embrace your desire to not be “a sap” and help you make your service bowling or Lebowski themed.

Deathcare professionals are hard-working, service-oriented people who get an undeserved bad rap for one of the hardest jobs on the planet.  Most of them just want to help.  All of them are familiar with how our culture handles grieving and can help you through the extremely difficult process.  Even if you do assemble a Big Lebowski Urn, you may want to rely on their expertise and comfort with the medium for transferring the cremated remains.

IMPORTANT

The largest coffee cans will house only approximately 185 cubic inches of volume.  This may make it unsuitable for whole cremated remains unless the deceased weighed less than 185 pounds in life.

1.

First eBay and/or Etsy Search

Search for:
“Folgers can” and “Folgers tin”

There will be significant overlap in these results but some sellers do not include both keywords because they know the object only as one or the other.  Be prepared for a deposition to speak as an expert witness in the history and anthropological implications of the last century of coffee can production, use, and hoarding.

Save a coffee can from the drudgery of holding rusty nuts and bolts and elevate it to a life of serving the deceased and those that remember them!

2.

Scan what should be about 200+ results for the following criteria:

  1. transparent black gradation underneath a full coffee cup illustration just below the “Folgers” text logo
  2. “For All Coffee Makers” in the upper left of the front of the can (these are so rare that we accept other grind types as reasonable facsimiles as evidenced by the photo below)
  3. photo evidence of structural integrity and rust levels of all sides and bottom of can – decide what you can live with (ahem, or rest eternally with) as a twenty-year-old steel can likely has some rust
  4. Full-size cans have what seem to be nearly identical diameters – making lids mostly interchangeable. The average volume is about 184 cubic inches making the receptacle an alternative for those with a living weight of under 185 pounds.
  5. Mid and small size cans will be considerably smaller than a standard of a human cremation urn. With the understanding that one pound of living weight results in 1 cubic inch, these sizes may be appropriate for small humans, pets, or as a keepsake urn. Blue lids don’t exist for the mid-size but can be wrestled off the internet for the smaller tins.

3.

Ebay or Etsy “Maxwell House can” and “Maxwell House tin”

Generally, the larger can lids are interchangeable between brands, but there are other smaller and off-sizes so you may need to acquire measurements of can outer diameters and lid inner diameters. Some lids are stretched out and don’t fit as tight as they used to. Other lids have cracks around the flange but barely affect the lid fit

4.

If your lid and can fit nicely – transfer cremated remains

This may not apply if you are deceased.

Your funeral professional will likely handle this for you. Even if you have already taken possession of the cremated remains, your local death care provider will be willing to assist you. There might be a fee and this is to be expected for the following reasons:

  1.  If a funeral professional is transferring cremated remains, they cannot be funeral directing elsewhere. They are employed by a business rather than volunteers at a charity. Just existing and being there for you incurs incredible overhead.
  2. Taking possession of cremated remains incurs a certain amount of liability that funeral homes are prepared and insured for.
  3. They’ve done it before and won’t Walter the cremated remains onto The Dude or anybody else.

If you decide to transfer them yourself (legal but emotionally weighty):

  1. Pick a location with good lighting and little or no wind.
  2. Lay out some large pieces of paper or cloth.
  3. Put on some music the deceased loved.
  4. Take a moment – this was a human.
  5. The remains will (or should be) in a plastic bag – leave them in the bag.
  6. Carefully remove the bag from the previous receptacle over the paper.

    If the bag is damaged, Stop. Carefully put bag back in previous receptacle, gather any spilled remains and pour them into the original receptacle using the paper.  See funeral professional for transferring remains into a new bag and the new receptacle.

  7. Carefully place bag into new, “modestly priced receptacle”

If the remains do not fit, you can see a funeral professional about options for portioning out the remains and obtaining an additional keepsake sized urn and/or scattering tube.

5.

Contact Memento or a local craftsperson for a base

This step, is optional, of course.  When we provide a wood base, we leave a section for laser engraving “Good Night Sweet Prince” or whatever you wish around the diameter:Theodore Donald Kerabatsos' Urn

We’ve also been known to source an orange bowling ball like Donny’s and turn it into a base for an urn.

Contact Memento Memorials

Big Lebowski Urn Replicas

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