Building a cabinet humidor from scratch

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In college, my industrial design course work included hands-on classes in all forms of manufacturing, including woodworking technology. During the woodworking class, we built several basic projects that introduced us to all of the machines in the shop. For the final project, however, we were given a very open-ended assignment, and were allowed to pick/design the item to build. For whatever reason, I decided that this would be a great time to build a cigar humidor with a great deal more capacity than my small desk top and tupperdor provided - not to mention that combining cigars and woodworking just made perfect sense!

My early humidor concepts revolved around 'mini' cabinets, with about 1 cubic foot of interior space (this capacity would nearly triple in size in similar projects later on), that would sit on a table or desk.

At some point, a Cigar Weekly forum participant suggested I check out James Krenov's work. A cursory search online revealed that Krenov had written several books. And another quick search revealed that the local school library had all of them.

Later that day, I dropped by the library and checked out all four of Krenov's books. Not only was this a turning point in my humidor design work, but also a turning point in how I looked at woodworking. Much of Krenov's views on woodworking made perfect sense to me. So it naturally followed that I was very much inspired by his designs, which combine both geometric mid-20th-Century modern lines as well as organic, artful shapes.

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Krenov is famous for cabinets set on delicately-legged bases, and this was the form I adopted for my cabinet humidor. I ultimately shaped my humidor design to be comprised of more basic shapes than Krenov's work, but this was due to my relatively basic woodworking skills as well as a somewhat short timeline for project completion. There was no time to develop the specialized tools or skills, nor gain the years of experience, needed to do fine sculptural work such as Krenov is renowned for. Being a student of industrial design, the simple geometric form seemed more than adequate to me for a humidor to function properly.

To begin building, I had to select materials to work with. Even early on, I had envisioned the humidor being built of two contrasting wood species. For the main case, I selected a large, thick and extremely heavy section of Honduran mahogany. The wood for the base was graciously donated by my grandfather when he learned of the project - red and white oak, both cut from trees and salvaged from an old barn on property owned by the family for several generations.

As I was heavily inspired by Krenov's work, I wanted to make the cabinet from book-matched panels. To do this, I had to re-saw the thick mahogany into boards (as well as match veneers for the back panel and stock for the door), all the while minimizing how much material was removed by re-sawing, planing, jointing and sanding so that the wood grain would be as close to a perfect mirror as possible in order to achieve a full book-matched effect.

Well-tuned machines went a long way towards keeping waste to a minimum, as did properly dried stock that remained remarkably stable after re-sawing. While preparing the mahogany was an exercise in diligence, milling the oak was an aromatic experience. Due to the fact that the wood had been around the family farm for longer than my grandfather had been alive, it was infused with wonderful aromas of hay, livestock and tobacco, all of which had been stored in the barn where the wood was used and stored for nearly a century. Working with this wood was an experience not unlike smoking a well-aged cigar that had many stories to tell.

Construction proceeded in relatively straightforward fashion. The cabinet case was dovetailed. A sharp eye may notice that the dovetails are oriented opposite of traditional construction. I wanted to have the trapezoid-shaped pins visible on the sides. This necessitated a back panel construction that was not solid edge-glued boards. To make the back panel, I used heavy veneer sawn from the same stock as the book-matched panels, glued to an MDF core. MDF was used because of its consistently flat surface and high dimensional stability. The ultimate goal was not only to allow a technically incorrect orientation of dovetails, but also to allow the back panel to be glued to the cabinet sides to minimize air leaks. (A traditional solid wood panel would need to have a relatively loose fit to allow for seasonal changes in the wood's dimensions).

The cabinet door was machined as a molding-like length of wood, and then mitered at the corners using thick splines to reinforce the joints, which would have otherwise been weak.

The base was very simple to construct. Rails were simply cut to length and doweled to the legs.

The humidor interior liner came next. With minimal funds available, I chose to use Honduran mahogany instead of the more traditional Spanish cedar (since the school's shop stocked plenty of mahogany). A lighter species was chosen to provide some contrast between it and the dark red cabinet. The liner was held in place simply by a tight fit. Because the interior wood would subsequently swell a small amount due to the increased humidity level inside the humidor, the liner was initially fitted in a slightly loose manner to keep it from buckling later when put into service.

Slatted shelves were made from surplus liner stock.

The finishing touches included solid brass hinges and mortised lock, door handle and a glass panel for the door. I chose to use Waterlox for the finish due to its easy application characteristics and ability to bring out the best in the mahogany cabinet. Indeed, what had appeared a somewhat mundane material became amazingly iridescent once finished with the Waterlox.

Exercising necessary caution, I allowed the finish inside the cabinet to off-gas, until it no longer smelled of solvents, before putting the humidor into service. This process took the better part of 4 months, no doubt helped by the summer heat.

To properly seal the door, I added thin, closed-cell foam to the channel cut into the door frame, and then did the final fitting of the unfinished interior liner, adjusting its overall depth with shims so the liner would protrude from the case enough to make a tight seal against the door.

After seasoning, the humidor was finally ready to hold cigars. I had originally wanted to make my own miniature active humidification system, but was never able to find all the components to build it. To my surprise, the humidor needed little in the way of added moisture to maintain its humidity level, so that active humidification system is still on hold.

I did encounter two problems, though. Initially, the humidor seemed too large, with a lot of empty space. However, it did not take long before another shortcoming arose - the humidor had somehow become too small!

It has been nearly 5 years since I built the humidor, and it is still going strong. In fact, it seems to maintain a more stable humidity level now than it did originally, not to mention that it now has acquired that wonderful 'humidor' aroma inside. Looking back, the only thing I would have done differently would have been to make it larger. Yes, you can never have too much storage capacity!

Aaron Hines (qajariaq) is a professional furniture designer who resides in North Carolina. He has been a participating member at Cigar Weekly since 2001. Besides cigars, some of Aaron's other hobbies include roasting coffee and building (as well as paddling) kayaks.

Original article and pictures take http://www.cigarweekly.com/magazine/cigarticles/02-12-2009/building-a-cabinet-humidor-from-scratch site