My Personal Humidor

Well, I finally got around to doing some work for myself. I recently sold my 12 bottle Vinotemp to a friend and used the proceeds to upgrade myself to an 18 bottle unit. This gave me about 50% more physical space, but almot 100% more useable space. I wanted the unit to be special, so I tended to every detail painstakingly.

Let's get started shall we?

To get started, we need to talk a little bit about humidors. In the simplest sense, a humidor is a special container designed to store cigars in an ideal state for extended periods of time. There are ageless debates about the ideal environment, but it's generally agreed that a cigar should not be stored above 72 degrees, and that they should live in an environment with between 60% and 70% relative humidity. The humdity prevents drying of the tobaccos and the subsequent loss of essential oils and other necessary goodness.

Many hummidors are plastic or wooden boxes which seal properly to prevent moisture loss, but which do not regulate temperature. In Phoenix, this can spell disaster if we are trying to keep our cigars at a temperature below 72 degrees. I can't afford to cool my entire house, so I choose to cool my collection of cigars instead. This is where a growing number of cigar enthusiasts turn to wine coolers. The thermoelectric cooling system common to these units is gentle on the cigars and is energy efficient. Because we are only trying to cool to below 72 degrees, they do not have to do much work to maintain a low enough temp. With some simple modifications, these can become works of art... at least I think so.

Here is the unit I decided to go with; it is an New Aire 18 bottle and I picked it up online for under 160 dollars. You can see it here, next to my old 12 bottle on the left:

Now a wine cooler is not a sealed environment, so I had to tackle that issue first. This unit only had one point where there could be an exchange of interior and exterior air though... lucky for me. Here we can see the condensation tray inside the cooler followed by a picture of the outlet on the exterior of the rear:

To make my cooler air tight, I just needed to seal the outlet. Many folks do this different ways, and all coolers have a different drain system. For me, a rubber thread cap fit nice and snugly to the outlet and sealed the opening very nicely.

Now that the environment is sealed, we can contemplate how to humidify the air so that our sticks are treated properly in their new long term storage. I am a gigantic fan of humidification beads. These are a passive non-mechanical humidification product which act essentially the same as the packets of silica beads that fall out of your new shoes and handbags. The difference is that those beads are calibrated for zero percentt humidity. All they can do is absorb moisture to keep your products fresh. The beads available for humidors are "programmed" at various percentages.This means they act two ways and will either absorb or release moisture to try and reach tier set-point. The beads I went with were programmed for 65% and are available from http://www.heartfeltindustries.com/. I highly reccommend this product and the mentioned vendor. Both are top notch. To use the beads, all you need to do is spritz some distilled water (always distilled!!) onto them so half are clear (moisturized) and half remain white (dry) toss them into your humidor and they will do the rest of the work to maintain the humidity properly. The bigger the container, the more beads you should use, and too many beads is not a bad thing... it just means they can react faster to changes in air moisture.

I elected to create a system by which I could use the beads in a worry free manner, and also guarantee air circulation inside the unit. Because I will be installing drawers and the fan in the cooler is not very powerful, the supplemental airflow helps to keep all parts of the box properly cared for. I fabricated a box which included several PC cooling fans, and which holds enough beads for my size of space.

That's a trap door on the top so I can access the beads to add water when needed. They will dry eventually as you open the door and exchange humidified air with outside air. Inside are several tubes of beads made from some cheap nylon stockings.

See, they look just like those packets in your shopping bags. Very cool technology.

The fans are equipped with led lighting which adds a cool effect, but to add to this, I also installed some cold cathode flourescent tubes in the same color. Two are attached to the door, and two are mounted in the rear of the cabinet.

With my cooler glowing and humidified, It was time to turn to actual storage of my cigars. As you know, I do this sort of work for friends as a hobby and wanted to really make something special for myself.

I ended up doing four drawers with faces and lattice bottoms. The bottoms are made with both Spanish Cedar and some Peruvian Purpleheart. Spanish Cedar has long been associated with storage of cigars due to its natural pesticide-like tendencies, as well as its amazing odor and ability to assist with humidity regulation. The Purpleheart is for looks!

Here is a bottom ready to be mounted inside a drawer:

To acheive the woven look, I simply cut all of my strips to the same size of a couple of common straight cut router bits. I then used an adhesive clamping system (masking tape) to make a "sheet" of alternating strips of wood. See here:

From there, set your router bit to half the depth of the wood, and using a fence, pass the sheets over the bit at the intervals you intend to space out your strips in the finished product.

Once you remove the tape, you can interlock the strips together into the bottom you saw above. It doesn't hurt to use a wee bit of glue in some strategic locations, but it is not necessary, or advised to glue every joint.

Once the bottoms were made, I glued them up to the rest of the drawer, which was a simple box. I then cut some faces of Peruvian Bloodwood (which I covet for the coloring and graining). To affix the faces, I simply sandwiched them with the drawer handle hardware I used. The hardware in this case matches the door handle on the cooler perfectly. Nice touch, I thought.

I also used some drawer knobs in the back of the drawers to prevent the drawers from crushing the cold cathode lighting tubes mounted in the rear of the box.

With the drawers assembled, I can now fit everything into place. Here are a couple of shots of the drawers in place:

 

Let's recap. We sealed the box, took care of humidification and lighting, and made some drawers our sticks can rest in. Now we move to the exterior of the fridge.

I contacted a brother who has a day job working with vinyl decals. He understood my vision and created a brushed aluminum frame to hide my light tubes and some faux etching decals which carry the logos of my all time favorite cigars. These were installed using a wet application which made things go very smoothly. Basically, if you are working with large or complicated decals, or ones which show air bubbles easily (the etched-look was notorious for this) then what you do is spray your surface and the sticky part of the decal with water, slide it into place, and squeegie out the excess water with a stiff rubber blade or credit card or something which rides over the masking medium.

Here's the finished look on the front of the cooler:

From top to bottom; the fleur de lis represents Tatuaje Cigars by Pete Johnson, the Lion Rampant represents Liga Privada Cigars by Drew Estate, and the crest with the AF represents a portion of the logo used by Arturo Fuente and the cigars made by his family.

So, how's it look all set up? Here you go:

As always, thanks for checking in. See you next time.