8/22/14 edit:
If anyone finds this thread, I'm leaving the text up, but I know all the photos are broken.
I've started another thread where I set out to take enough pictures of the process to make it a little more how-to and a little less look-what-I-can-do.
http://www.botl.org/community/forums/showthread.php/75440-Making-Cheap-Chinese-Humidors-Work
/edit
Thought I'd share this. I typed this out on another forum in response to someone that was having a hard time with his cheapo humidor. I've done this now on two cheapo glasstops and both continue to work well.
Brother in law had a heck of a time getting his glass top to work. This is the one he has I was at his house and saw him wiping down the interior surfaces with a sponge and distilled water and asked him why he was torturing the wood like that. Especially these cheapo humidors, they're usually a very thin veneer over pressboard (look closely at the lip that the base sits in) and direct moisture contact is NOT GOOD! There's no reason to wipe down wood with water.
He was about to toss it in frustration and stick with tupperdors (not a bad idea..) but I asked him to let me have it for a while and I'd try and sort it out.
Couple things:
Problem: The base of the humidor is extremely thin. 1/8" at best. It took all of a finger push to break it away from the bottom. The felt was the only thing holding it on.
My fix: Cut a piece of plexiglas to fit the base of the humidor and silicone it to the super thin base.
Problem: The front mount hygrometer does not seal around its perimeter. The gasket that holds it in place isn't a continuous-contact gasket, instead it has peaks and valleys which leaves a lot of open space for air exchange
My fix: disassemble hygrometer and superglue the dial at the humidity reading he wanted. Just to make it look pretty (70), reassemble and reinstall, then silicone a piece of plexiglas over the entire hole on the inside, totally blocking off the hole.
(No pics - but just that - a rectangle of plexiglas to fit over the hole)
Problem: The lid seal didn't do a darn thing. The 4 pieces of wood were poorly fitted and not well fastened to the lid, allowing too much movement of the slats.
My fix: Remove all 4 pieces of wood from the seal and apply a bead of silicone to hold them in place, then used a couple small pin nails to hold them in place to the outside. Now when the lid closes, if you let it down gently, it needs a little push to close all the way.
Problem: The glass isn't sealed in place
My fix: after removing the 4 slats of the lid seal, I removed the 4 pieces of the glass seal. I then applied silicone to the glass and put in place, applied silicone around the entire perimeter, and glued the wood back into place before gluing and nailing the lid seal slats back into their spots.
Problem: The factory humidification device sucks.
My fix: While you've already addressed this with Boveda packs, my fix was to put a half pound of 70% HF beads in the box. Mind you I did this in February and we had a brutally cold and dry winter. The beads held on at 68% without issue.
Final step: I added oversaturated 70% beads to help stabilize the moisture content of the wood "seasoning" and taped around the lid of the box and let it sit for two weeks before touching it again. It held solid as seen in the picture above, so I loaded it up and properly bombed him with some cigars, a new digital hygrometer and a half pound of HF beads
Bottom line is these cheap humidors are made for ease of construction and low cost of production. If you want to make em work, you're going to have to either ditch it for a tupperdor or put some work into it because the manufacturer did not. Or you can spend several hundred on a quality unit. Personally, I'd recommend going with tupperware or doing my fixes. I spent about $15 on materials (plexiglas, tiny nails, foodsafe silicone) $20 on a good digital hygrometer for him, and $25 on Heartfelt beads. So about $60 plus a little time (less than an hour total I think) and he's got a humidor that performs nearly as well as my $$$ desktop.
These are the only pictures I had on my phone from the project. The next one I do I plan to do a full writeup with detailed procedural pictures but it didn't occur to me at the time that I'd want to share this info with others.
If anyone finds this thread, I'm leaving the text up, but I know all the photos are broken.
I've started another thread where I set out to take enough pictures of the process to make it a little more how-to and a little less look-what-I-can-do.
http://www.botl.org/community/forums/showthread.php/75440-Making-Cheap-Chinese-Humidors-Work
/edit
Thought I'd share this. I typed this out on another forum in response to someone that was having a hard time with his cheapo humidor. I've done this now on two cheapo glasstops and both continue to work well.
Brother in law had a heck of a time getting his glass top to work. This is the one he has I was at his house and saw him wiping down the interior surfaces with a sponge and distilled water and asked him why he was torturing the wood like that. Especially these cheapo humidors, they're usually a very thin veneer over pressboard (look closely at the lip that the base sits in) and direct moisture contact is NOT GOOD! There's no reason to wipe down wood with water.
He was about to toss it in frustration and stick with tupperdors (not a bad idea..) but I asked him to let me have it for a while and I'd try and sort it out.
Couple things:
Problem: The base of the humidor is extremely thin. 1/8" at best. It took all of a finger push to break it away from the bottom. The felt was the only thing holding it on.
My fix: Cut a piece of plexiglas to fit the base of the humidor and silicone it to the super thin base.
Problem: The front mount hygrometer does not seal around its perimeter. The gasket that holds it in place isn't a continuous-contact gasket, instead it has peaks and valleys which leaves a lot of open space for air exchange
My fix: disassemble hygrometer and superglue the dial at the humidity reading he wanted. Just to make it look pretty (70), reassemble and reinstall, then silicone a piece of plexiglas over the entire hole on the inside, totally blocking off the hole.
(No pics - but just that - a rectangle of plexiglas to fit over the hole)
Problem: The lid seal didn't do a darn thing. The 4 pieces of wood were poorly fitted and not well fastened to the lid, allowing too much movement of the slats.
My fix: Remove all 4 pieces of wood from the seal and apply a bead of silicone to hold them in place, then used a couple small pin nails to hold them in place to the outside. Now when the lid closes, if you let it down gently, it needs a little push to close all the way.
Problem: The glass isn't sealed in place
My fix: after removing the 4 slats of the lid seal, I removed the 4 pieces of the glass seal. I then applied silicone to the glass and put in place, applied silicone around the entire perimeter, and glued the wood back into place before gluing and nailing the lid seal slats back into their spots.
Problem: The factory humidification device sucks.
My fix: While you've already addressed this with Boveda packs, my fix was to put a half pound of 70% HF beads in the box. Mind you I did this in February and we had a brutally cold and dry winter. The beads held on at 68% without issue.
Final step: I added oversaturated 70% beads to help stabilize the moisture content of the wood "seasoning" and taped around the lid of the box and let it sit for two weeks before touching it again. It held solid as seen in the picture above, so I loaded it up and properly bombed him with some cigars, a new digital hygrometer and a half pound of HF beads
Bottom line is these cheap humidors are made for ease of construction and low cost of production. If you want to make em work, you're going to have to either ditch it for a tupperdor or put some work into it because the manufacturer did not. Or you can spend several hundred on a quality unit. Personally, I'd recommend going with tupperware or doing my fixes. I spent about $15 on materials (plexiglas, tiny nails, foodsafe silicone) $20 on a good digital hygrometer for him, and $25 on Heartfelt beads. So about $60 plus a little time (less than an hour total I think) and he's got a humidor that performs nearly as well as my $$$ desktop.
These are the only pictures I had on my phone from the project. The next one I do I plan to do a full writeup with detailed procedural pictures but it didn't occur to me at the time that I'd want to share this info with others.
Last edited:
great post.
