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Hello my friends. I understand many of you build humidors on this platform. It would appear (to me at least) that what these people sell as a working humidor does not actually work. I hate to be so blunt, but there you have it! It is also the source of the most common questions that I am asked about in correspondence. I just received yet another one this AM... I know many of you are happy with your products and purchase of these, so for you simply ignore what I am going to ask. Operation of a humidor is in the eye of the beholder, I get that. I am curious however. Many of you know that I convert wine coolers to humidors as a boutique business. And these, working or not are very popular. So if I told you to trash the beads and all the guesswork in converting one of these, what would it be worth to you to get a project that actually worked? Yes, this is a money question. You see, I have never thought of these as a viable humidor, but honestly I have never bothered to try and convert one. Development costs me time and money and neither in my case are unlimited. If I sold a kit for one of these, one that really worked that I could prove within a reasonable tolerance, would any of you be interested in buying it? And lastly, what would it be worth? There is no right or wrong answer. I believe that I can develop this into a platform that can work within the realm of what performance a TE cooler can deliver. Will it work in my shop at 90F? No way, well, I doubt it. But will it work at ambients below 80F? Maybe, maybe high 70's... I don't know. But the parts and the system cost money. And my development time and the cost of the materials including the cooler, something that I have no real interest in building for myself are real. So what say you? Thanks for helping me out... and don't be embarrassed to post. If it working is only worth $100.00 put it down. I want to know. If the concuss is that I can make money at it and get you guys that are log jammed happy it might be worth it for me to take the project on. Cheers! -Piggy

After 35 years of smoking, I believe I have finally perfected my herf kit. My kit is the simple accessories needed to smoke a like a pro anywhere! Cigar, not included!!! -LOL I pinched the design of the cigar stand from our host, picture of monkey in fez not included. I upscaled it a bit and machined it from 0.125 6061... How do my mates say it... AL-U-min-Eoum! Cheers! -Piggy

Oh the pain!!! Hello all, been awhile. More life and times according to Mr. Piggy. If you have 20 minutes to burn, light up a Chicos and join me! -Piggy

DAMN... WHAT A CIGAR! Hopefully you can hang through the review. It is long... too long! I repeat myself over and over again...! I would not give back a second of it. Video review is up... ... beware the 'the wildlife detour.' Thanks for watching! -Piggy

I am trying to keep my videos here on the humidor tutorial forum so people can find them. This is the same video posted on another thread. -Piggy

As I have been posting up videos on my most recent controlled humidor build on the Humidor Tutorial forum, I decided to post up the progress of the performance of this new build. Here on Isla PigFish we have been experiencing a little bit of a heat wave. While this happens, I get an opportunity to move away from cool weather performance and work on some warmer weather performance. Most controlled humidor solutions have to deal with extreme dehydration during a cooling cycle. All units that have active cooling; regardless of the BS you read all over the net, dehydrate while cooling. Unless one uses a series of high-resolution data loggers one will never know. I know, many don’t care… But I do! Here is progress on the latest Generation 12 cooler (controlled humidor) from Mr. Piggy. Thanks for reading. Cheers... -the Pig

For me, packaging means precious little! But, one thing that I have been taught about cigar smokers being around this site, is that branding is important to a lot of people! I just like to be creative when I make items that I need, and sometimes a little 'fluff' is a lot of fun! Enjoy. -the Pig

There is a lot in the analysis of humidor performance based on how you look at data. Take this case in point. I often look at raw data from my data loggers in a highly compressed, macro perspective. While this view can leave you, will leave you, without much in the way of detail, it will help you espy trends and shifts, and even corrections needed to your system. Here is the first data log. Now I data log this test box everyday, unless I forget to download the logger and reset it. I test a lot of stuff in this box. I house a few boxes of cigars in here plus my frauds collection. The cigars just take up space as I use the humidor for some overflow and to park cigars while I move them around, or have no other place to put them. This is a 'working' humidor, tuned to work in the real world and not tuned to find utopian results. This humidor works in my shop, not in my home and I keep cigars in it even when the temps in the shop exceed 90˚F. If you look at the data streams, the data is so compressed that it gives you an overwhelming sense of the highs and lows, the extremes, while obscuring the data in between the highs and lows. One of my clients needed a low profile humidifier and I chose this box to test it. What I have not liked about how this humidifier works in this cooler, is the deep low-end extreme values that the humidifier produced in this cooler. It is important to note, that at my level, sometimes the slightest change in your humidor design will produce profound effects. This is one such case. So what I did here is to replace my standard 26CFM fan with a 36CFM fan. I wanted to match the rate at which the cooling would strip water from the humidor with a humidifier that would meet or match that rate when the humidifier was operating. Now, this philosophy is not without risk. You can overshoot your system parameter when you use the approach, and empirical testing is the only means to determine if you have succeeded! Here is the micro look at what these cooling cycles look like. You can clearly see the system cool and the humidifier compensating for the loss of humidor water as the system cools. This is one logger, logged through my controller sensor so it is time aligned. The deep rH cycles are of course the result of cooling cycles, some of which can be cured by tuning the activation logic. Since this logic approach will ultimately affect the way the humidor as a hole runs, and I could 'tune it' for a specific result, I deliberately chose not to do so here. Like I said, I generally 'tune' humidors to run in the real world, not to provide limited 'perfection' to post about. I could tweak this thing to look damn good on the logger but that is not my point nor my goal. A robust working humidor is my ultimate goal. There are a lot of factors that go into making decisions about this "robust working humidor" philosophy. None of which I am going to cover here. I just wanted to say, if I was hell bent on tweaking this for a 'better log,' I could do it, but would consider it cheating! Here is what happened when I changed the fan... Wow! What you can see here is the rapid rate of hydration that the new fan provides. For now, I will call this one a success. Of course there may be lurking a specter of overshoot if the right conditions are met. Now I have studied the cooler function now for several days and I don't think it is going to happen, but it still could under the right circumstances. Lets look finally at the micro view. It too is very telling. One of the keys to knowing that I have succeeded here is in seeing that the initial running of the humidifier during cooling actually is halted by programming, it is overpowering at this stage, as it overproduces water initially, requiring a shutdown and restart. Look at the chart and you will see it all. ... now a little activation logic tweak... maybe. -LOL It never ends...! That another day! Thanks for reading! Prof. Piggy