A Large Format Humidor

Stuart Ablett

Member
Messages
15,917
Location
Tokyo Japan
Well I'm finally getting around to building the large format humidor for the liquor shop. It will be very much like a china cabinet but with humidification. :D

This is sort of the type of thing I'm shooting for.....

humidor8.jpg


The one I'm building will be two pieces and the bottom piece will be a bit deeper than the top piece, but only a few inches. Bottom will be for housing the humidification unit and storage, the top will be for display of cigars.

Some WIP pics....

First I have to come clean about something, I often say that because of my limited shop space I don't use my tablesaw to break down sheet goods, well as this picture proves, I was not entirely telling the truth about that.....
sheet_goods_breakdown.jpg

... I do use the SawStop, but not by itself :D

I got the Lee Valley shelf hole drilling jig a while back, boy does it work slick....

humidor_shelf_holes.jpg

... maybe too slick, as I ended up drilling WAY too many holes :doh:

Here is the dry fit....

humidor_base_dryfit.jpg


and then the glue up.....

humidor_base_glue_up.jpg


I glued and shot brad nails at the same time, worked well, the case went together nicely!

The kick is a seperate piece, maybe I'm nuts, but I like doing cases this way, then I can level the kick on the floor before the case is on it. The kick will be attached to the floor and the case to the wall behind it, we do live in earthquake country.

The cases are made from the lumber core Shina (Basswood) plywood, I don't really like this stuff, but that is what I have to use. The face frames and doors will be solid wood, not sure what yet. I'm thinking to just go with Maple and then stain it. Where the humidor will go in the shop only the front will really be visible. I'm thinking to stain the whole humidor and then apply several coats of Urethane to it.

The case will be 90cm/35 1/2" wide and a total of 200cm/78 3/4" tall. The lower part of the humidor will be 65cm/25.6" tall and the upper portion with the glass doors will be 135cm/53" tall. I'm wanting to go with two tall wide doors, I think this will be OK as the cabinet is only 90cm/35.5" wide, the doors will be slightly less than that. I plan on having fairly thick rails and stiles, maybe up to a inch, and fairly wide as well, this should give me good strong doors. I think I can get away with 5mm tempered glass for the doors, no real rules or laws that I can find here, talking to the glass guy down the street this is what he thinks will be OK, might go for 6mm thick just in case but he says it will just be heavier, and will not really be that much stronger.

Next step will be to head down to Shin-Kiba and buy some rough lumber, going to pay for some good stuff this time around, not bother with the hockey stick material :D

I have the idea to run some of the LED interior lights that activate when you open the doors as well as the humidification unit and all the vents and fans needed to get good consistent air flow. The shelving in the bottom will be solid, but with an air space, at the back and front, but the shelves in the upper case will be made from strips of wood like drying racks to make sure that there is good air flow.

I'm thinking that I'll put a center divider in the upper case like the lower case, mainly to strengthen the cabinet, but this will also allow me to have the shelves on each side to be set at different levels if I need to.

Lots more to come, this should be a good build, with a good mix of stuff.

Cheers! :wave:
 
Lookin' great Stu. I've done the same thing with shelf holes. Never stopped to think, "who needs a shelf that's only 1 1/2" tall". :rofl::rofl::rofl:

Regarding the LED lights. How about using a motion sensor rather than a door actuated switch. As the customer walks by the lights come on and say, "Come look at me. Buy me." :D
 
that shelf pin drilling jig is mighty fancy.
I still use the same piece of pegboard with a board nailed to the bottom so I know which side is bottom and I circle the holes I want drilled with a sharpie.
IM looking foward to the final product
 
Looks like a fun project Stu. I am sure it will turn out great, just like all of your work!

Good luck with it:thumb:
 
Thanks everyone! :D

Looking good. Where are you getting the humidification unit from?

:lurk:

I have one in the old humidor, I built it myself, not much too it, a fan from a computer, an AC/DC adapter converter thing to run said fan and a humidity sensor unit, it it set to turn the fan on if the RH is below 70% and off when it gets much above 70%, has worked well for many years. On this unit I'll also have a second set of fans at the top just to make sure that the air flow is good.

Cheers!
 
a humidor that size, do you use spanish cedar inside of it? what do you line the plywood with? if anything.(I dont know much about humidors)

This is not really plywood, like most think of it, it is lumber core sheet goods, the majority of the thickness is solid wood, the outside few layers are veneer. The surface is basswood, which is nice enough looking, but a bit soft. I cannot get Spanish Cedar in Japan, it is illegal to import it, dunno why exactly but it is. I will use Luan, as it is a very close cousin and has similar properties.

Cheers!
 
I had conversations with the contractor I purchased all my mahogany from and he mentioned he used basswood as a core center(filler) to build out entranceways that were made out of mahogany.
He mentioned it was a softwood but stable and strong enough.(and much less expensive than mahogany)
 
I just built a laminated coaming for a boat out of basswood. I was impressed! I had less problems laminating it than anything else I have used. It is probably going to be my go-to wood for lamination's now. Just have to make sure to keep the varnish up on them.
 
I went down to an area of Tokyo called "Shin-Kiba" right on the waterfront, it is the import area for wood. The shop that I've been dealing with, Miseki, did not have what I wanted, Maple, so they called up a friend's shop which did, the introduction in this kind of thing is very worthwhile and why I try very hard to build a relationship with people I'm doing business with.

Now the really funny thing, when I went to the shop Miseki had introduced me to, Nakajima, I realized that I'd been to this shop once a long time ago when I was looking for some nice Walnut and they did not have any, so they introduced me to Miseki :D Kind of a circular thing.

I got six nice boards of Canadian Hard Maple, The boards are all very nice 5/4 and are from 7" to 9" wide and 8' long. The total I got was .1047 of a cubic meter, that is how they sell wood here. How much wood is that? That is about 45 board feet, I paid just a tick under 40,000 yen for that or about $515 US, yes, that is not cheap, $11.44 a board foot..... Still I think I got a good price for Tokyo, don't forget that exchange rate is really inflating that by about 25%, it is more like $9 a BF, if you know what I mean.
maple_haul_5.jpg

Loaded into my mini van.

While I was there, I was poking around, having a good chat with the guy running the place, I told him about my Canadian friend Peter who has found some amazing birds eye maple in his fire wood pile, and was kind enough to bring me some. The young fellow told me that sometimes in pallets of lumber they find cool stuff to, then proceeded to blow my mind with some amazing boards. I had to ask "How much" and he said $19 a BF...OUCH but.... it is an amazing board....

maple_haul_1.jpg

maple_haul_2.jpg

maple_haul_3.jpg

Sorry, those pics are a bit blurry.

When I got it down to the Dungeon I snapped a few more....

maple_haul_6.jpg




maple_haul_8.jpg


maple_haul_9.jpg


I don't think the pics show even 20% of the curl etc going on in this board :eek:


maple_haul_11.jpg


It is a full 12" wide....

maple_haul_12.jpg

1 1/4" thick.....

maple_haul_13.jpg

and 12 FEET long!

One heck of a lot of nice things can come out of this one board and any scraps, well they will make nice pens etc!

Now I have to figure out how to deal with the curl, I know my planer will tear it out big time, so maybe need a drum sander to do some finishing work... :rolleyes: :D

I cannot wait to get into this stuff, but it will be set aside for now, I want to get the humidor finished first. The board of curly maple I am considering my payment for doing the humidor, well that and some new tools of some kind I guess :D

Maybe I'll buy another blade for my #4 1/2 hand plane and regrind the bevel to give me a plane that can handle the curl...?

Cheers!
 
Amazing just to think of maple as an import, backward thinking for me:p Nice wood though:thumb: I have 200BF of of curlie maple coming, good thing it is not at that price per bf:eek: Good you have some wood contacts Stu:thumb:
 
Well, I just could not help myself :eek:

I cut the 12" long board in half, too long for my shop, and then I got out some hand planes and made a mess.......

curly_maple_1.jpg


curly_maple_2.jpg


curly_maple_3.jpg


curly_maple_4.jpg


curly_maple_5.jpg


As usual, pictures do not do his wood justice!

Another thing I forgot to mention, when I was talking to the guy at Nakajima, and I mentioned that I was building a Humidor he said that he had some mahogany from Fiji, which is still OK to sell, as most mahogany from other places is banned:dunno: I then mentioned that I sure wish I could get Spanish Cedar, and he said that he was sure, positive, that he could get it :eek: :thumb: There was also a very large pile of wood standing there that I did not recognize he told me it was Southern Yellow Pine :doh: That is the stuff that I wanted to build my workbench out of:huh: Oh well, now I know you can get it, still, the Douglas Fir I got was WAY cheaper, maybe if I ever build another bench I'll go that direction.

I took this opportunity to also set up my # 4 1/2 with the new IBC blade and chipbreaker set, boy that is slick! I had to file the mouth just a touch to make it fit, but just a light honing and I was taking very fine cuts on that curly maple board with almost no tear out.

Cheers!
 
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