DIY Case Humidifier using polymer moisture crystals

Spots.. Was Andy going to make this a sticky?? Might send him a reminder.
 
Is there such a thing with over humidfied...I've seen mold growth inside of the ukes and they smelll musky when played.......as we don't need them in Hawaii...Happy Holidays!!! MM Stan..
How don you get rid of the mold, I tried to use straight bleach and it still comes back???
 
I had good luck with my DIY humidifiers. I use those plastic containers that come with 35mm film. Poke a few holes in the top, then pack them tightly with cotton balls. Add water, and they are good to go. Stan, I was worried about mold too, because I opened one up a few months ago and the cotton had gray spots in it. I remedied that by adding a couple drops Euculisptus oil in the cotton. It is a natural fungucide, and keeps the mold away.
 
It works, it works!

Polymer Crystals - $12 for a 1lb bag at Lowes
Pill Bottle - free
Peace of mind for all your ukes - priceless!

BTW, I just can't stress how little of this stuff it takes for a single humidifier. You can judge the size of the pill bottle by the picture of it hanging in my Mainland mango tenor. I started with about 1/4" of crystals in the bottom of the pill bottle. The crystals are about the size and appearance of table salt - so small that a lot of them will fit through the 1/16" holes when they are dry so I shook the assembly dry to let the small ones fall out - that took what was left to something under 1/4" in the bottom of the bottle. As I added water and shook the container I ended up removing about 1/3rd of the now wet crystals to make more room for water!

John
 

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Thanks Spots, I have added this to the faq sticky! :)
 
A shorter pill bottle with a small rubber grommet glued to the top for the strings to ride in would be even better, I think...
 
Is that gel the same stuff as the crystal packets that come with electronics and some packaged foods? ("do not eat")?
 
Im not familier with the gel stuff they are talking about, but I would guess NO, it is not the same. The stuff in the little packages that say "Do Not Eat" does just the oposite I think? I think they absorb moisture from the atmosphere. The humidifier stuff adds moisture to the atmosphere. So, I think it is just the oposite effect.
 
Another place to find the crystals is at a pet store. It is used to keep water for crickets and such. You can get much smaller bag of it too.
 
These crystals can be found in gardening supply areas too. They are used in the soil as moisture sources. And they are used in "cool collars" that some outdoor folks put around their neck in the hot summer.

The brand in our house is Schultz "moisture Plus Watering Crystals" that we got in a garden shop.

Be careful -- they expand a LOT.

Ralph
 
When I think about how many 35mm film canisters I've thrown away in the past I could kick myself. I think they would be the perfect size, especially for smaller ukes. I haven't bought a roll of film in probably ten years or more - do they even still sell film?

John
 
OldePhart said:
When I think about how many 35mm film canisters I've thrown away in the past I could kick myself. I think they would be the perfect size, especially for smaller ukes. I haven't bought a roll of film in probably ten years or more - do they even still sell film?

John
Click to expand...

They are perfect. Thats what I use. I still have a few laying around from the old school "film" cameras, lol..
 
Heh, heh. Funny story - when I was a young airman living in the barracks my roommate and I were both heavily into photography. We both bought film by the carton and kept it in our freezer. We got "raided" by the OSI one day and were watching two guys tear our room apart. Their eyes lit up when they opened the freezer and saw a couple of dozen film canisters - they thought sure they'd found our stash! :)

I almost felt sorry for them when they went away empty handed.

John
 
lol.. I have very similar story. Back in the day, those were the "stash" containers when I was in the Air Force myself, hahah.. I had my camera case ransacked many times by SPs.. hahha..
 
The small canisters that hold diabetic test strips are a good size to fit in uke cases. These days, most of us knows someone that uses these. My wife gives me one per week. I had been using floral foam scraps that the florist gave me. A handheld 1" hole saw cuts it nicely. I put three holes in the top.
I will check out the crystals from the pet shop when I pick up the catnip for my cat's Christmas present.
Here is one of the canisters next to a 35mm canister.film can 002.jpg
Bill
 
KamakOzzie said:
The small canisters that hold diabetic test strips are a good size to fit in uke cases. These days, most of us knows someone that uses these. My wife gives me one per week. I had been using floral foam scraps that the florist gave me. A handheld 1" hole saw cuts it nicely. I put three holes in the top.
I will check out the crystals from the pet shop when I pick up the catnip for my cat's Christmas present.
Here is one of the canisters next to a 35mm canister.View attachment 18687
Bill
Click to expand...

Excellent idea, and I do have friends who are diabetic - I should have thought of that! That's an even better size than the 35mm.

John
 
Tudorp said:
lol.. I have very similar story. Back in the day, those were the "stash" containers when I was in the Air Force myself, hahah.. I had my camera case ransacked many times by SPs.. hahha..
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was funny how this happened, too. We had this senile first sergeant (I'm not kidding, he was real brown shoe, thought we were still in boot camp or something). Anyway, he was doing room inspections and found a seed in the cracks between the tile so they called my roommate and I in with our supervisors and then had a couple of investigators from OSI go over the room with a fine tooth comb. Now, I saw the seed the first shirt found and it was marijuana - but it was also covered with about ten years worth of wax, he'd had to dig it up out of the crack with a pocket knife.

The investigators lit up again when they found a small piece of a leaf on the floor, then they opened my roommate's locker and found the dead potted plant that someone had given him for his birthday. My roommate was a AAA nerd and had neat little files of all his stock and bond investments, etc. By the time the guys got done with his locker they were saying over and over, "these guys are too neat to be dopers." We knew they really meant we were too geeky - and that's before I started playing ukulele!

I used to volunteer for bay orderly during the holiday season because I wasn't going home on leave and most of the guys in the barracks had family within a two or three hour drive so they liked to go home for the week between Christmas and new years. This way they got to go home, and I got to pull bay orderly when there was no one in the barracks to pick up after! Oh, and the officer's wives club always brought enough goodies to the day room to feed a full barracks, let alone the eight or ten of us there over the holiday week.

Anyway, I was vacuuming the hallway one day, lifted up the butt can to vacuum under it, and found a bag of weed. I picked it up to check it out and was just getting ready to put it back under the can when that same senile first sergeant walked around the corner and caught me (this was before the room inspection incident - and now that I think about it might have been part of the reason for it). I was like, "gee, look what I just found, do you think it might be marijuana? LOL

John
 
lol.. Man, we can probably go on for a long time with old AF war stories.. One more and I promise to return to the previously scedualed thread..

I was pulling dorm duty one week, and I went out to mow the lawn around the dorm, and when I got behind it, I found there were more little biddy pot plants than grass, lol. The 1st shirt came out with the SPs, and they realized this was the back side of the dorm, and everytime they ran the dogs through, all the windows on that side of the dorm would fly open and dope was being dumped out those windows. That and when guys cleaned their dope, all the trash and seeds would just get tossed out the window. This ended up in a pretty impressive crop outside the back side, hahhah..

That same week, me and this chic that was pulling dorm duty with me had the chore one day of cleaning out dorm rooms from troops that had left to a new asignment. We were in one room, and it was one of a few that have a fridge in it. In the fridge was a bottle of cheap wine (TJ Swan if I remember) and a HUGE block of cheese. We sat in that room for over an hour just BSing, and eating cheese and drinking that bottle of wine, hhahah.. A several days later, that gal came to me and asked if I had gone to the bathroom since then, and I hadn't. that cheese clogged both our arses up for a week or so, hahhah.. Those were the good ol days for sure.. ;)

OldePhart said:
Yeah, it was funny how this happened, too. We had this senile first sergeant (I'm not kidding, he was real brown shoe, thought we were still in boot camp or something). Anyway, he was doing room inspections and found a seed in the cracks between the tile so they called my roommate and I in with our supervisors and then had a couple of investigators from OSI go over the room with a fine tooth comb. Now, I saw the seed the first shirt found and it was marijuana - but it was also covered with about ten years worth of wax, he'd had to dig it up out of the crack with a pocket knife.

The investigators lit up again when they found a small piece of a leaf on the floor, then they opened my roommate's locker and found the dead potted plant that someone had given him for his birthday. My roommate was a AAA nerd and had neat little files of all his stock and bond investments, etc. By the time the guys got done with his locker they were saying over and over, "these guys are too neat to be dopers." We knew they really meant we were too geeky - and that's before I started playing ukulele!

I used to volunteer for bay orderly during the holiday season because I wasn't going home on leave and most of the guys in the barracks had family within a two or three hour drive so they liked to go home for the week between Christmas and new years. This way they got to go home, and I got to pull bay orderly when there was no one in the barracks to pick up after! Oh, and the officer's wives club always brought enough goodies to the day room to feed a full barracks, let alone the eight or ten of us there over the holiday week.

Anyway, I was vacuuming the hallway one day, lifted up the butt can to vacuum under it, and found a bag of weed. I picked it up to check it out and was just getting ready to put it back under the can when that same senile first sergeant walked around the corner and caught me (this was before the room inspection incident - and now that I think about it might have been part of the reason for it). I was like, "gee, look what I just found, do you think it might be marijuana? LOL

John
Click to expand...
 
Tudorp said:
lol.. I have very similar story. Back in the day, those were the "stash" containers when I was in the Air Force myself, hahah.. I had my camera case ransacked many times by SPs.. hahha..
Click to expand...

I used to load my own film and for the ones that actually were "stash" containers, I taped a length of 35mm film like a leader to the inside of the canister so it looked like fresh film. Worked like a charm.
 
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