Humidor & Spanish Ceder?

[Haze]

:confused:

Hello can someone please help me i´ve got some questions about ceder tree for humidors.

First of all i want to know if Spanish ceder is the same all around the planet or if it´s a local name?

Then if Spanish ceder have any special functions thats why u should choose Spanish ceder?

I´ve been searching around but still no clue

Thanx alot

[bigAl]

Dear Haze,

The stuff you're looking for is Spanish Cedar, which strangely enough comes from South America. You can't actually get any from Spain, they don't know what the hell you're talking about. It's all very strange.

The Cedar is called Cedrella Odorata and is also known in Australia as Cigar Box Cedar, but as I see you're from Sweden, that may not help a lot.

Getting the right Cedar is important. The reason is actually because the oil imparts a nice flavour to the cigars. The cigars you store in the humidor are hygroscopic (even more so than the wood) and they'll absorb the moisture and the odour around them. Put a cigar in a red cedar box and it'll taste like crap within a week.

Off the track a little, you can prove the hygroscopic thing yourself. Put a couple of Montecristos (strong Cuban cigars for those that are politically correct and wouldn't dream of lighting up) in contact with a few Dominican with a mild flavour for a few weeks and see what happens to them. This will also highlight why you need a few dividers in the humidor between the Cubans, Nicaraguans and Dominicans.

When I first tried to get Spanish Cedar in Australia (about seven years ago now) there where a lot of confused timber suppliers out there, but the situation here has improved a lot.

If you really have a hard time finding any, a good source is the wooden boxes from the Dominican Republic and Cuba that the cigars are sold in. That’s Cedrela Odorata.

I’ve done a lot of veneering over the years and the base rule is always to veneer both sides of the wood. That’s not the case the Spanish Cedar. Don’t ask me why it is, but I have never had a humidor bend itself out of shape. That’s a neat trick when the inside of the box is always like a swamp (70 percent relative humidity).

Finally, the modern high tech way of joinery for Humidors is to use a locking mitre bit. If you’re ever lucky enough to see a really good old humidor, the joints underneath the veneer are hand cut mitred dovetails. If you’re planning on an heirloom piece, it’s the way to go.

Hope this helps.

Al.

(Smoke em if you got em).