On building humidors (part I)
After ordering a bunch of cigars from my top-secret supplier, it occurred to me that I needed a place to keep them. Woohoo! Quickie project.
There will be a few posts about this, but for starters:
Humidors are great projects because you can build them from fairly small amounts of wood. That means you can use up scraps from old projects, plus throw some amazing-looking expensive figured woods on there in reasonably small quantities and not blow the bank.
But what about the lining? You want spanish cedar. NOT any other kind of cedar, or your cigars will smell like a hamster cage. Spanish cedar is remarkably expensive for an otherwise-unremarkable softwood; it usually goes for about $5.50/bf in inconvenient thicknesses (you want 1/4-5/8). At proper thickness, it can be 4.50 per *square* foot!
What’s a thrify woodworker to do? Well, try your local cigar shop (you know, the one you shafted by buying all your stogies online). Turns out that many, although not all, cigar boxes are made of 100% spanish cedar. They can point you to which ones, and will often sell them for cheap (few bucks a box) or give them away for free. Et voila! Enviro-conscious recycler cheapskate humidor, and nobody will be the wiser.
Grab some of those boxes–you’ll thank me for it.
PS: I just bought 15 bf of spanish cedar and had my wundersawyer mill it to size for me–the whole process will cost less than the Credo.
(No, I’m not smoking all 200 or so cigars… I actually went in with two friends, so only a third of those are mine. Which, if I calculate correctly, at my current rate of smoking them, is a roughly one-decade supply.)
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