Here's how the body panel is assembled before the raised inserts are installed.

The sides are assembled along with the solid granite for the base. This makes sure the fit is perfect and precise.

The making of a Vanderburgh Handcrafted Humidor.

Made for you one at a time, never mass produced.

Here you will a summarized process of how a Vanderburgh CustomRaised Panel humidor is crafted. As you can see, each Vanderburgh Humidor is handcrafted one at a time, and never mass produced.

This attentive approach allows the craftsman to individually select just the right woods for your exceptional humidor.

Visit our Quality & Craftsmanship section to learn all of the key points.

Click each image to expand.

WOOD SELECTION:

When we get a go-ahead from a client, we hand-select the woods specifically for that humidor. Because we purchase our woods in small batches, we can pick out woods with exceptional character and grain. Imagine how difficult it must be to be as particular as this when ordering large lots of woods.

After the wood has been selected, the wood is 'dressed' or rough planed to give us a better idea on colour and figure.

The profiles to the humidor are sized and cut as needed. Notice that our humidors are made with solid exotic woods up to a full 7/8" (22 mm) thick of solid wood. This gives an immense amount of character that you simply cannot get from a thin veneer.

SOLID WOOD vs VENEER: As you may know, nearly all other mass produced humidors are made with veneer 1/16" max (less than 1mm) over another type of wood. There isnothing really wrong with this process, except that in our opinion solid woods make a humidor with muchmore character and appeal as you will see later.

After the profiles have been cut, other cooresponding profiles will be cut to match. Some of the body panels will need to have precise 45 degree mitred corners.

If your mitred corners have not been cut on a very precise saw, you will get gaps in the joints. This is very unsightly. You will be surprised by the level of detail, andprecision in the way your Vanderburgh Humidor has been made.

GRAIN MATCHING:

An important process in building your humidor is matching of grain. We take the extra time to match the right wood grain to the appropriate pieces of your humidor. This will give an overall balanced look, and it is an extra step in making an extraordinary custom humidor.

The beauty of the solid exotic woods is starting to make sense now, as these profiles have an exceptional amount of character that will be seen at a variety of angles and profiles.

PRECISE CUTTING of PROFILES:

The raised panel inserts are now cut to size. Notice how the centre profile is will be cut to give a raised appearance when fit into the humidor frame. The character of the wood will 'come alive' as the exotic wood's character is revealed through the cuts.

BODY FRAME PROFILE MATCHING:

The wood's character is matched on the individual horizontal and vertical humidor frame profiles. This step will balance the overall appearance of handcrafted humidor. We are also matching the centre raised panel inserts into the cooresponding body frame.

PRE GLUING ASSEMBLY :

Now you can see to the right and left, the centre panels are loose fitted into the body panels of the humidor. This is to make sure everything has been cut and will fit correctly.

After the panels have been matched and fitted, a soft arch has been cut to form some unique character on the bottom side of the humidor. Little extra design elements like this gives an immense amount of character to the humidor. Now since everything fits nicely, we will go ahead and glue it all up.

GLUING: As you can see here, we have 8 different clamps to hold and glue the entire humidor together. We never use cheap glues to hold your humidor together. We use only top quality waterproof adhesives for long term durability.

FINAL SANDING, and PRE-FINISH:

We hand-plane the faces of the humidor prior to final sanding and finishing. Now the humidor has had it's final sanding, and is ready for hand polishing and finishing. Notice how well the wood profiles matched up with the body of the humidor.

You can also already begin to see the different colour tones in the Sapele Mahogany that we picked out.

FINAL FINISHING, HUMIDOR LINING, and INTEGRATION OF HUMIDIFIER and HYGROMETER:

The only other step we do to the humidor is line the interior with solid Spanish cedar, and outfit it with the appropriate humidification and hygrometer system. We typically install two types of humidification systems that we have found work very well. Our passive system is a Polymer Crystal humidificatoin system, and our active system is an easy to use German Engineered CigarSpa system.