# humidor



## JMendez035 (May 14, 2008)

my friend wants me to make him a humidor to hold about 100 cigars. ive never made one before and was wondering if anyone had any plans or advice thanks


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## TexasTimbers (Oct 17, 2006)

Humidors were my first real money-making woodworking venture in the early 90s. There wasn't much info available and I was not yet online in 1990 when the craze found me and my shop. 

I would love to share some info with you on this topic because it is one of the few areas of woodworking which incorporates other technologies which I also enjoy. 

I will tell you one of the most important things you can do is find out what his favorite cigar/s is/are. But shooting from the hip, a 100 cigar box is going to need to be roughly 16 x 14 x 8. That's rough and dependent on whether he likes logs or branches.

You only want the humidor to be filled to 75% capacity too, which is something most of the "plans" will not tell you. There are many many options in approaching the humidity and instrument aspect of humidors now. "Set and forget" stuff that was not available to me those nearly 20 years ago. 

Ask some specific questions and give us an idea of what you have tentatively planned. This is a topic with a million possibilities even for a desktop sized humidor like your customer wants. 

I have some extremely well dried Spanish Cedar left. :yes:


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## JMendez035 (May 14, 2008)

i think my main question is how to construct it so that its air tight so it will actually function as a humidor as opposed to just a box


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## TexasTimbers (Oct 17, 2006)

I am not being a smart eleck when I say precise tolerances and lid design. I settled in quickly with a lid design which (pretty standard now I believe) was recessed around the inside top of the lid, so that the spanish cedar which I had rising above the box itself 1/4", would accept the lid and make a tight seal. You have to put a roundover on the top of the cedar so the lid will clear it, and only by a hair. You could chamfer just the outside but it looks bad. A small roundover on both the inside and outside edge looks better from my expeirence and to my own eye. 

You can do this by hand with sand paper after a while. You can also run the edges along any 30ish edge on a router table, just taking a hair of and then finish by hand. You can also use a 45° edge but for me it was harder to manage because you have take just a very small amount off, and is less forgiving. 

You will find the biggest challenge at first will be getting your miters to fit absolutely perfect inside the box, and still be the perfect length also. One trick I used for a while was glus the cedar lining to the inside of the box and then make all the cuts. but I soon read how the lining needed to expand and contract and I figured I was asking for trouble. Remember how wood expands and contracts across the grain when it takes up and releases moisture. Length wise is not much of an issue, but with the grain orientation the way the lining is sitting upright, it wants to rise and fall a little. 



Now I never noticed an actual measurable difference in all those 4 or 5 years I built them, and I never heard back from any of the customers I used that process with that there were any failures either. Maybe they were just patron saints whenn it came to making sure the humidifier never ran out of distilled water. Sure. 

I have typed a lot and covered little I realize, but that is because there are so many ways to screw up the lid design and even the execution must be perfect. I made some of my first few humidors with the lid height way too short. I still have one of them because the lid warped within days of me bringing it in the house to my "clean room" to apply the finish. Your lid height must be suuficiently high to resist warping. Theoretically it should not matter if the wood is stable grain and 7%MC but theory and reality are often at odds in spite of the fact theory in some matters can appear to be balck or white. Nyet commrade just doesn't work that way sometimes. 

I used black walnut for most of my humidors and I never used quartersawn. I didn't really know what quartersawn was back then. I mean I "knew" but I didn't understand. If I was going to select a hardwood today to build one, black walnut would still be a option, but I might look to a wood that lent itself to looking great quartersawn. That would avoid much worry with the lid staying perfectly flat. Nothing will break your heart more than seeing the lid of your jewelry box or humidor raise at all four corners. 

I will also throw one more trick out there and warn you about using it. When I said I glued the cedar lining to the inside of the box sides and ends, the first step is to build the box as a whole, less possibly a bookmatched "panel' let into the lid itself (a whole nuther topic) and then running it along the table saw to seperate the lid. This is a commonly known trick, but you have to start with wood that is absolutley perfectly flat and square. Your execution of cutting the miters (or whatever joint you use) must be flawless. Your fence must be absolutley perfectly parallel with the blade when you do it. Your tolerance for this is not 1/64" because that will show up like a sore thumb. We are talking hundredths, if not a thousandth of an inch. 

The reason is once you start to try and correct the 1/64" gap you see on one or two of the edges where the lid is sitting on the box, it's never-ending game of gap-chasing. It has to come out perfect from the saw needing only some hand sanding to erase the kerf marks. Do not put a soft edge on the edges of the lid and the box where they close. You want a sharp edge so there is no appearance of a "gap". 

Now after you do that, you cannot have glued the lining because you need the 1/4" lip. So one process eliminates the possibility of using the other. For the bottom, I almost always used a piece of solid cedar, and let it into a rabbet on the underside. That eliminates fooling with that piece. This just scratches the surface. it could be argued that using exotic plys is easier and more stable. True. But when a customer picked up one of my humidors it felt like $400+ when you pickup a mass-produced one from Malaysia yes they are pretty as all get-out, but they feel like a feather. 

If you go for a plan, make sure to see what kind of lid design it calls for. If it has a plain edge-to-edge seal between the lid and box I would pass on it. 

Hope I have said something that will come in handy.


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## firehawkmph (Apr 26, 2008)

Jake,
A humidor is on my list of projects to do. I haven't made one yet, but I have a nice piece of paduuk (I can never remember the spelling) sitting awaiting. I found a site that has some info on humidors.
http://www.buildyourownhumidor.com/
It has links for the humidifiers and hygrometers too.
Mike Hawkins


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