Custom Texas Cedar Cigar Ashtrays

Making custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays for a customer was a wonderful project showcasing some of the tools that CNCROi.com to transform a solid board of Cedar into a wonderful smelling useful household item.

It didn’t take very long to figure-out what wood species to use to make these custom Texas cigar ashtrays, Cedar was the first and best choice as the smell will compliment the cigars if and when it goes get burned by the ashes.

We’ve made a lot of custom project using Cedar in the past at CNCROi.com, one popular item we make using Cedar are custom-house number signs in any shape or sizing requirement.

This is a great example of the versatility CNCROi.com offers you, whether it’s a custom Cedar house number sign or you live in another state or country and want a custom Cedar cigar ashtray to match that or a corporate branding, we can make it!

We use our small format industrial ShopBot CNC router for this project because it’s the perfect form factor for such a relatively small project, we have ordered a full-sheet ShopBot as well, but even if we had that available right now at CNCROi.com, I still would have used this ShopBot Desktop for production of these custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays.

Using Cedar for a variety of other projects is something CNCROi.com has done in the past, including custom real Cedar business cards, we have a lot of species available to us!

Going back to the custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays, the first step is rooting out the inner pocket that will hold the ashes, this is nice and deep so that the cigar has plenty of hold to be left in there if needed after it’s out.

After the pockets are complete, it’s time to cut out the outline of the wonderful state of Texas, you’ll notice the tight tolerances of the pocket holding the ashes and the outer perimeter of Texas being consistent all the way around.

The results from the CNC router are a bit rough but that isn’t an issue, the first step to solving that is giving it a light sand to remove the bulk of it on the custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays.

Here’s another Cedar house number sign we made earlier at CNCROi.com, Cedar is a wonderful wood, it preserves very well naturally, looks amazing after being varnished and as we aren’t adding any paint to this one below for the contrast, nothing will fade, crack or peel off over time.

The use of our amazing Rikon bandsaw to remove the scrap material does a very quick job of cleaning up the custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtray for the next step along the production process.

This is really looking amazing, even with knots and grain patterns unique to each custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtray, it’s something I’m sure you’ve never seen before and is both beautiful and totally functional to boot.

I actually got my Rikon 326 bandsaw about a year and a half ago back when CNCROi.com was in a far smaller shop, here’s how I put this wonderful piece of woodworking machinery together!

There is a slight ledge on the custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays so that needs to be routed out, I used an extra long bit on purpose, this allows any straggler pieces that may be inconsistent to also be removed in this process, this makes sanding a million times easier.

You can already see how wonderful the edge quality is on this custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtray, do keep in mind that at the end of the day, this is still Cedar so there are little pieces that do fly off but they are quickly rounded-up.

Cedar is a wonderful wood to work with but it is very brittle especially at these tight tolerances, if this custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtray was only slightly smaller, it wouldn’t be possible so we got very lucky to have the best design right off the bat!

Sanding reveals the wonderful grain pattern in the wood, you can see how the precision of our ShopBot Desktop matches so well with the production of these custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays and adds a tremendous amount of “free” character to each piece.

The knots add their own distinctive flare and points of interest, I really like knots, they give just about anything we make just so much visual appeal, compared to some of the boring and totally identical stuff you find at typical stores.

CNCROi.com has made a lot of custom wood projects, some are simple like these ashtrays, others, a little more complex.

After this one custom Cedar ashtray was produced and tested, it was time to jump into production and make a whole bunch more custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays!

The process when it comes to production is pretty straight forward, just slide a board into the machine, cut out a tray and then rinse and repeat until all the units required are made.

Making custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays is pretty fun, each step has its own challenges and rewards, but the end results just look amazing and I couldn’t be prouder of how they came out.

There is such a huge variety of grain patterns, knot distributions and character to each piece, even I would have a tough time choosing which I’d prefer having, just love these custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtrays and I don’t even smoke!

Of course, CNCROi.com has other machinery in the shop as well, one of which we used to laser engrave the back of a very special custom Texas Cedar cigar ashtray.

I love the laser engraving of this Cedar ashtray and the results our Austrian wide-format Trotec laser did on it too!

Have a need for a custom woodworking project? Contact CNCROi.com!