July 11th – While the casing is curing, it’s time to make the lining.

Here is a run through of milling the boards:

The bottom and main picture: four quarter Spanish Cedar in the rough.

Upper left: Rough cut to length to ease milling

Center: get one face flat on the jointer – takes a couple of passes.

Upper right: Run the other side through the planer, and get all of them the same thickness.

Middle right: joint one edge square to one of the faces.

Bottom left: ready to rip to a consistent width.

Next step is to re-saw the board to 3/8” thick. This means fixing the band saw or splitting them on the table saw – no worries.

BOBVILLAHA

is your joiner an 8 inch?

^ About 5 jokes went through my head at you question . . . .

No, I have a 6” jointer – that is somewhere between 30 and 300 years old.

LOL -- ya, as soon as I posted it, I though that this could go down hill real fast.

to add fuel to the fire, mine is a small 4 inch bench-top -- makes working with rough cut a challenge

LOL

if I can pry????

how much did you pay per board foot for the spanish cedar?

handle AT roadrunner dot com if you don't want to post it.

My foggy memory tells me I paid a little over $6 a board foot, which is pricey for 4/4 rough (I believe they were select and better grade). I could have gotten it for a little less than $6 a BF, but it was a longer drive.

thanks a bunch, I finally found a place that will work with me and help me procure it.

My plan is to make the whole thing out of spanish cedar, no exterior shell.

Do you know how you are going to seal the door yet? Just some weather stripping from a big box place or is there something else you may try?

^

You could do it that way too, but woods may be better insulators or help control moisture loss better? What about a vapor barrier?

You are wearing a mask and goggles, particularly with Spanish cedar, aren't you?

Fargus- You can order milled Spanish cedar on line from Rockler, or even E-bay. You will pay for the milling though. I had to go through the web and yellow pages to find hardwood retailers in the Dallas area – there arn’t too many locally.

Most of the big commercial “tower of power” humidors are made of solid cedar. If you finish the outside (oil, lacquer, poly, etc.,) that will form the moisture barrier needed (these finishes are designed to seal the wood). Spray can lacquer would be my first choice after some Minwax stain (color of your choice). Let the stain cure a good two weeks. Rubbing out the lacquer will make it look like a pro did it.

Sealing the door – The inside liner will use ship's lap joints to allow for expansion. The ones nearest the door will have screws with slots to let me press them flush with the door and then secure them (this can be re-adjusted at will). The door will have some cedar mounted such that it can be pressed and secured against the cabinet cedar, forming a double seal. I’ll post some pictures once it’s going together.

- If this design approach fails, plan B will be to add weather striping, just like the production cabinets use.

I may be different (that much is certain) but I don’t have issues with the cedar dust. Now when I have worked with Padauk, well, that stuff in nuclear waste – And just won’t use it any more.

Brewha,

Thanks so much for the intel. Here is where I am. I've been looking for this spanish cedar for a while, finally found a place that has 4/4 x 10" x 72" locally. They will mill it all to 1 flat thickness for 3.95 a board foot. I'm a bit limited to my wood working tools and $$$ so I figured why not just build it out of all spanish cedar. I'm still figuring out what to do about the exterior so will take your ideas into consideration.

I'm struggling with the shelving part but will probably just put in like 4 flat shelves and load some with boxes and others with some spanish cedar trays found on-line.

Pictures would be great when you get that far!

fargus24 AT roadrunner DOT com