Natural Adhesive

[Ebow1]

I have a new project I need help with. Basically, ammo can humidors. I've got handful of cedar strips, I just need some way to adhere them to each other and the inside of the ammo cans that will hold up to 70 degrees at 70% humidity. I know they use vegetable gum to hold together the wrapper leaves on cigars. Does anybody have an idea where I can get a decent amount of natural adhesives that can withstand these conditions? Also, if this works out, I do plan on selling them, so if anybody thinks it's neat lemme know.

[Sam1]

Looks like this one is just angle cut and a bit oversized to fit snug.. Not sure if you are just wanting to use up the supplies you have, or if you're looking to build one with whatever it takes

[Ebow1]

I don't have thick cuts like that. I've just got paper thin strips like the ones they sometimes wrap cigars in.

[MacGyver]

You'd be a lot better off searching for some thicker wood so that can fashion mechanical joints. Pretty much any glue vapor as it outgasses is going to be noticable in the taste of the cigar.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Home depo has cedar boards not expensive at all unless you plan to build a fence, deck or shed out of the stuff. As does Lowes. And maybe your locality has mom&pop building materials stores to check. My local Home Depot, the wood prices seem a little lower than the lowes, but OTOH sometimes lowes has cut sizes I can't find at home depot. Such as 1.25" thick oak planks or whatever. That is just an overall impression as I haven't done "scientific study" on the issue. I just go first to home depot when looking for wood.

There is another interesting cedar material I've bought from home depot but the odds might be good finding it various stores. It is about 1/4" cedar pressboard used for lining closets, but typically comes in 4X8 sheets.

In the big box store shelving aisle sometimes they sell little kits of small pieces of cedar wood for lining drawers. Maybe expensive by the board foot but maybe a convenient size for your project. Been awhile since I looked at those packages to remember what they contain.

The home depot will cut wood for you, but they don't guarantee accurate cuts. I usually just get wood cut "too big" to make it easier to tote in the van. Ferinstance when size doesn't matter, sheets of plywood ripped lengthwise in half are lots easier to stuff in the van than tote full sheets home and rip em in the back yard or wangle them across my "barely big enough for a full sheet of plywood" table saw.

Anyway, if you luck up and find a home depot employee who is pretty good and feels like doing you a favor, make him feel good that he is helping you out, you might be able to look over his shoulder and get accurate enough angle cuts for your boxes, without having to fix it up at home.

Some of the 3/4" cedar boards for fencing might be wide enough but sometimes they are rough-cut surfaces rather than smooth. But rough cut might be as good or better than smooth for your purposes, dunno. They also sell tongue and groove smooth cedar boards for fancy closets or yuppie out-buildings. Just saying, when I go looking for cedar there don't seem as many choices of size, compared to pine or oak.

[10-Ring]

I don't know jack about humidors and cigars but I thought that I would throw this out there anyway, maybe you can use it? How about the sap from a pine or cedar tree? Could that possibly work?

[KaNuckles]

I don't know jack about humidors and cigars but I thought that I would throw this out there anyway, maybe you can use it? How about the sap from a pine or cedar tree? Could that possibly work?

This is what I was thinking. There are some good vids on Youtube about how to turn this stuff into epoxy. And if they're in cedar boxes anyway, I wouldn't see how it could affect the taste that much. But I could be wrong about that.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Just in general, researching on the web in the past, sometimes cedar can be more difficult to glue with conventional wood glues, compared to most other woods. IIRC because of the oils in the wood. I've successfully glued-up cedar with aliphatic glues like TiteBond III, but IIRC some folks didn't have good luck. Just sayin, just because an adhesive will work on wood, isn't a slam dunk it will work on cedar. As best I recall reading about it.

[Ebow1]

Well the good news is I don't need to be using any adhesives. I've found Spanish Cedar boards in varying sizes on ebay pretty cheap. Cutting and fitting those should be a lot easier than trying to glue together paper thin strips. Also, I can't use just any old cedar, it HAS to be Spanish Cedar, which I've found out technically isn't a cedar at all but actually a mahagony. It's also not Spanish so I have no freaking clue how it ended up with the name it has now.

[Louisb]

Make it properly sized with the thicker wood and NO glue will be needed

[TrickyNicky]

Make it properly sized with the thicker wood and will probably actually work. What you where describing sounds more like decorative veneer more than anything. I bet aside from being easier to work with the thicker cuts will do a much better job.

If you Find you still need some glue I would recommend hide glue for your project.

It's trickier to work with but not at all impossible and you shouldn't have any fumes bleeding into your stogies.

Best part is you can make it yourself cheap out of Knox unflavored gelatin available in most any grocery store.

Titebond makes a synthetic hide glue as well that is supposed to be easier to work with, but I haven't tried it and don't know about the fume bleed out.

Also make sure your source kiln dries the Spanish cedar as it is prone to warping. At 70% humidity you may encounter issues...

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Thanks thats interesting that hide glue can be made from Knox gelatin. Hadn't used hide glue since early 1960 shop class (you kids quit screwing around back there).

Also interesting that spanish cedar is so different, thanks. Happened to talk on a forum to an expert woodworker in victoria canada who was making wondrous things out of cedar, which seemed difficult or impossible to make out of eastern cedar. He explained that western cedar is radically different from eastern cedar. That guy would find huge cedar logs as driftwood and rip them into "free lumber". The one time I went to that vicinity the cedars were big fat incredibly tall trees, compared to the scrubby eastern cedars.

If there happened to be a modest market of people who would like to have an ammo can humidor, and if the dimensions of the standard-size ammo cans tend toward consistency, that might be a small spare-time biz opportunity for a fella with a table saw and a tape measure. Sell kits online with the pre-cut wood for various size ammo cans. Maybe even optionally include a rubber mallet for folks who just hardly don't even have any tools.

Wonder how many ammo cans have odd smells that would need purging? I dunno nothin about them but buy one or two per year, mainly for storing ammo in. Some of em have bad smells. The ones I buy at gun shows usually look in cherry shape, big stacks of "nearly new" looking. Maybe been painted but lately they don't look beat up at all. Maybe the rank smell comes from paint. Am guessing the rank smell was from some kind of military use rather than use after they were sold off, but dunno. One can had a difficult-to-get-rid of real bad smell difficult to describe, but about as bad as dead possum on the road. I cleaned it several times with water, clorox and alcohol and it still smelled. Sat it outside, open upside-down on the steel-wire deck table a few months ago to get sun and air. Haven't checked lately to see if it still stinks. I don't buy em from the same dealer everytime, just whoever happens to have a big stack of ammo cans in good shape. The last one I bought this spring didn't have a horrible stink but it had a strong rotten cardboard smell, most likely from storing old cardboard ammo boxes? I cleaned and cloroxed that one and it got most of the stink out, need to check it again to see if it needs more cleaning.

Just sayin, dunno how many ammo cans stink enough that they would need cleaning to become a humidor, or what would be the best method of cleaning to remove the stink. I'll probably paint my stinky ones once they don't stink "very much" any more.

[TrickyNicky]

Well in all honesty it's more "like hide glue" than being hide glue. It's from I think cattle bones so no hide. it's rendered clean so it's devoid of all the fats and grease that would typically make animal glue rot.

There is (surprise surprise) a bit of Internet debate as to how strong the Knox glue is.

I used it a couple of times and had no complaints and think for this kind of project it would work well, I don't know that I'd recommend using it for building furniture or anything but it does work pretty well.

Took a tour if Canada about ten years ago and loved Victoria. One if the cleanest, nicest places I've ever been. Capilano was great as well. Saw a Native American Canadian who did basically the same thing with found wood. Made some very elaborate pieces and sold them off to tourists.