VaillanBlog - Wood is Good

My Personal Humidor

2010-03-20T01:01:00.001-07:00

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.

What can't you make with wood?

2010-02-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a quickie.

A friend of mine has a beautiful walk-in humidor. Fully stocked and simply beautiful. He has all the walls lined with Spanish Cedar and has glass racking for all of his trays and boxes. Marvelous.

Only one problem... can you tell me what is wrong with this picture?

If you said something like "WTF is up with that cheap oak looking lightplate?" you were on the right track.

Now... bad wood is better than no wood in this case, but the glaring issue is obvious. When working in an environment this beautiful, it is important for the finishes to be well taken care of.

Enter one lonely scrap of cedar from my pile, and 15 minutes of quick work:

That's a Spanish Cedar plate which was hand fabricated by yours truly to solve this very specific problem.

If I can get a shot of it installed, I will update the post. It just goes to show how a little wood, and a little time can add beauty to any situation.

See you next time.

Exotic Wood Cigar Stands

2010-01-10T00:57:00.001-07:00

Now here is an easy one that anybody with a table saw and some sandpaper can do in their garage. I got my hands on some really beautiful Peruvian hardwoods at the wood store but it wasn't huge pieces. I thought and thought about what I could do with it and I came up with these little beauties. I ended up with about a dozen in each wood. I plan on gifting them out to some of the awesome brothers on my cigar community; BOTL.org.

Here is the trio of stands finished out.

From left to right: Purple Heart, Bloodwood, and Yellow Heart.

These pictures do not do the look of the wood much justice, as anyone who works with wood will tell you. The natural shimmer and variations of these exotic woods is just sublime.

Here's the breakdown. Start with 2 inch by 3 inch blocks. In these cases, I used quarter inch thick boards. Cut a notch about an inch from the top and slide the two slabs together. Here's a stand taken apart:

And then put together on its side:

A close-up of each stand for grainy goodness!

Purple Heart:

Bloodwood:

Yellow Heart:

Some of you might be interested in some "action shots." I aim to please! Here are a couple in action.

How about a Tatuaje Drac nestled in a Bloodwood holder? Oh yessss:

Or a Liga Privada T-52 in a Yellow Heart cradle?

These were a lot of fun to knock out, and I have some buddies who can put them to good use. A nice feature is how they pull apart and can go right in a bag or pocket and then slide together at the scene of the crime.

If you're interested in getting your hands on one of these, shoot me a comment or an email and we can make the magic happen.

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

Artsy Fartsy Stuff

2010-01-10T00:04:00.000-07:00

So this next one is decidedly not too manly... but it was put together for the manliest place in my domain; the gazeebo in my back yard. This is where I do all of my cigar smoking. I had an old table back there that was getting pretty crusty around the edges so a refinish was in order. Rather than stopping at a sanding and refinish though, I decided to let loose with a full on decoupage top. Of course, with a Cigar theme.

I don't have any "before" pictures, but trust me when I say that this thing looked pretty rugged.

For those of you unfamiliar with decoupage, here's a quick run down. Step one; cut out a bunch of images on paper from magazines, catalogues, greeting cards or whatever strikes your fancy. Step two; use a diluted white glue or a special decoupage glue to glue everything onto your surface in a giant collage. Step three; cover the whole thing with enough coats of glue so that everything is nice and smooth and sealed down.

Here is a series of shots of the top of the table. (Overview and then 4 quadrants zoomed in)

Here is an agle shot. You can see the sheen off the decoupage medium, very smooth. 7 coats later.

In the Phoenix sun, I didn't want to risk placing items on the surface directly, so a glass plate was in order. I picked one up from a hotel liquidation center for 10 dollars that fit nicely. To support it, I used screw on anti skid bumpers from the hardware store.

Finished product here:

And the table back in its home:

As always, thanks for checking in. If you'd like any instructions or additional detail, just leave a comment. I'm happy to offer up anything I might have left out!

See you next time.

Custom cedar wineador trays for my friend Dan

2010-01-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is a breakdown of the trays I built as a second run for my BOTL friend Dan.

These came together for less than 60 dollars for materials for all four.

Dan wanted something more drawer-like so I made some basic modifications to my original design. Added some runners that would fit into the stock wine rack grooves, and Viola! Trays become drawers. Dan's drawers were a little bit taller than my trays and totally custom for his Vinotemp 12 bottle fridge.

Here's how the capacity turned out:

And here are the drawers installed in his Vinotemp:

Notice the woodburning and even how cool they look behind the tinted glass doors:

I am willing to make these for other folks if there is interest. It can take a couple of days or even a couple of weeks depending on my day job workload, but shoot me a comment and we'll work out something.

Thanks for checking back. See you next time!

Trying my hand at custom Cedar Wineador Trays

2010-01-07T22:41:00.001-07:00

I got the itch to upgrade the storage system in the 12 bottle Vinotemp that I have been using for cigar storage. I looked all over the internet and checked with some friends but came up with relatively little on the market for custom storage. My friend Ron at CigarSolutions (see links) does carry some very decent cedar trays at a good price, but they weren't what I was looking for. So... I took matters into my own hands.

Woodworkers Source here in Phoenix had a couple of lining remnants laying around at a really good price, so that was the real catalyst. 1/4 inch finished planks just the right square footage for the job. I got these two bad boys finished out for under 30 dollars.

This was my first attempt and I have to say, they are certainly solid and for my needs they are working great. Here are a couple of additional images:

I used a router for the flames and if I had it to do over, I would probably skip that and use a wood burner instead. I'll be posting up the second set I made for a friend of mine soon. You'll see the results of that woodburning technique in that post. Here's a parting shot of the trays installed in the Vinotemp.

Thanks for checking in. See you next time!

Breathing life into a Blog

2010-01-05T17:13:00.001-07:00

This blog will serve as a way to memorialize different projects I am working on, and as a central location for me to refer folks to when they are curious.

I am a middle manager by day, but make sawdust by night (ok, weekends). I enjoy cigars and delicious adult beverages, in moderation. So, every so often, I might share my thoughts about these topics here as well.

I'll likely fail to update more than once a week, but feel free to stop back and say "hi" whenever the mood strikes you.