Charging humidity beads
Keep reading about people charging their humidity beads. How is this done? My 2oz 65% tube came from heartfelt w/no documentation or instructions. Currently I just have the tube in my humi (which is still seasoning from the other day), presumably they will charge by grabbing the water from the dish inside? Or do I need to directly do something to them to get em rolling?
Also - today's day 3 in my seasoning process. Things seem to be going nicely, my digital hygro is reading 69%, 71 degrees F. At what point should I take out the dist water dish and just let the beads do their thing? Honestly not being impatient (though I am looking forward to loading her up, got a big shipment from ccom today!)... 
Comments
There are actually instructions with the beads -- they're printed on the packaging that's stapled to the top of the plastic bag they came in. Here's what I do.. I pour some distilled water on a spoon. I dribble the water onto the tube of beads. I let them absorb into the tube over about 5 seconds. I rotate it a bit, and do the same thing. After about 3-4 of these, you should see that most of the beads have turned clear. That means they're charged. If most aren't charged yet, repeat until they are. Don't charge all the beads, or you'll risk running a high humidity.
The beads probably aren't charging quickly or fully enough in your humi. You'll need to be a bit more proactive about getting them to soak up water.
As for seasoning, 3 days in my opinion is not enough. I cannot stress enough that patience is the order of the day in seasoning a humidor. Grab some tupperware and put your sticks in that with the beads, and wait it out on the seasoning; at least a week, longer is better. The RH reads fine right now, but putting new sticks in and removing the water will make it plummet.
When you do put "fresh" cigars in your new humi, only put a few in a day; 5 or so. Again, patience is key here. Let the humi recover from each new batch of cigars for a day, than 5 more.
This way you will have less fits from your humi, and fewer dips and/or spikes in RH. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the tips guys...no worries, I'm really not gonna force the time on the humidor. Seriously. No, really. Okay, fine. I want to, but I won't. I've got about 50 new friends coming from ccom today, they'll stay in their water-pillow bags until next week, when I'll start adding them to the humi in small groups.
As for the beads, I didn't order the AC adapter, so I'll charge them a manual. Must've been a factory mistake with the bead directions (or it fell off in the box and I missed it). No biggie, now that I know how to work em.
I actually just took apart the disc humidifier that came with my hunidor. I took the green foam out and threw it away. The humidifier is the same black plastic thing you always see, but it's also got a mesh screen that sits on top of the foam. I kept the mesh screen in, and dumped my half ounce tube of beads into the disc. All but about a dozen or so fit in. I put the humidifier back together and now I've freed up some floor space in my humi! That, and it will be a breeze to re-charge them. I'll just open the humidifier and dribble the beads with distilled water.
Got the idea here
Also, good bead instructions can be found here