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V-man

I have zero distilled water in the house. Being as I live in Delaware, it's true that a copious amount of water distilled by God falls on the yard fairly frequently... but that's why we had the old roof replaced last Spring, to keep that distilled water out. When I want distilled, I turn to Balvenie. Close as distilled water gets to the home office where I am typing this and where I roll my sticks is that from time to time a gust of wind may knock some of God's best against the window.

Seriously, this whole distilled water obsession seems to me about as silly as hand sanitizer. Hell, I even change my motorcycle oil without blue latex gloves. I have gone so far as to swat a fly all hand nekkid. It's a dirty world. I'm a dirty guy.

I smoked a store bought gar today while watching the Army Navy game. Someone on the cigar.com forum sent it to me, I forget why. It was an Opus X. Prolly cost the guy a fortune. Good cigar; tho I was comforted to find that I myself have rolled and stashed any number of gars which I thought tasted just as good. Bliss or Marc could readily roll you one that looks as good. But the point I am spiraling around to light on is that the water used to wet the leaf and mix the glue that went into making that revered Opus X ... you almost certainly would not want to drink it. Fair chance of giardia or at least Moctezuma's revenge if you did. Yet the guy who pays a fortune for a stick like that will treat it with kid gloves, use distilled in his humidifier, put it in a humidor seasoned with distilled, like it was all a religious ritual. Bull. If you are worried about chlorine, leave the water set & that stuff will fly away. Or use bottled. Distilled is just throwing money out the window. I know guys insist on distilled water for their glue even. Honestly, how much fluoride is in the half drop of water you fetch when you dab a fingertip in the glue pot? What's smaller than a nano?

Mold? Never had it.

Now pay close attention to this right here => The method I show in that vid is not any method I use at this point. It is not THE method. It is only A method. I'm just showing A simple way that any ordinary guy can pop out his first gar without driving himself crazy worrying about details. The farther you progress prolly the drier you roll. This is not a demo of the perfect method. It's simply to show a newb to say "I can do this!" That's it. There are plenty and plenty of vids showing cats who have rolled hundreds of thousands over a 30 year career. They mostly demonstrate how to lay a flawless wrapper. That's not this. I was just trying to fill a hole. I asked myself: "Where's the vid shows a guy how to pop out a presentable stick right off the bat?"

Take the test gar I rolled last night: a single core leaf of Corojo 99, two and a half leaves of Nicaraguan seco, bound in a half leaf of Connecticut broadleaf I scored at FX Smith's, wrapped in a half leaf of CT shade scored the same place. The Nic and Corojo came as is right from the bag shipped from Whole Leaf Tobacco. The Nic had been in that bag for a couple years, in fact. Zero water involved. The CT Broadleaf was prolly the most carefully dampened up, being as I had to unravel some pretty squiggly wrapper leafs to flatten one out. They were in the conditioning tub a couple days. The CT shade was prolly only in the conditioning chamber half a day. I set the result in front of the hearth a couple hours and fired it up. Entirely satisfactory.

Do not wet your filler. Only dampen your binder just enough to make it flexible. Then dampen your wrapper so's it will lay flat. Dry the stick and spark it. Mold does not come into the discussion.

Nor should any other species of worry. Just whip out a stick like it ain't no rocket surgery.

Have fun is it.



Hey this Opus X above is the first gar pic from my new phone. I have high hopes it will snap much better images than my old pocket phone.
Thanks man.
 
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Well. I gotta say, not often in life have I felt more humbled and frustrated. Not nearly as easy as it looks. Here's my first turd. I won't be giving up. Couldn't get a cap on it. Draw is akin to the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper, with maybe three or four squares of toilet paper lightly stuffed inside. Leaves were crumbling as I tried to roll. Obviously too dry. I'll pop em in a ziplock overnight with a spritz of water, try again tomorrow. Ugh.
 
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Well. I gotta say, not often in life have I felt more humbled and frustrated. Not nearly as easy as it looks. Here's my first turd. I won't be giving up. Couldn't get a cap on it. Draw is akin to the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper, with maybe three or four squares of toilet paper lightly stuffed inside. Leaves were crumbling as I tried to roll. Obviously too dry. I'll pop em in a ziplock overnight with a spritz of water, try again tomorrow. Ugh.
Don't worry. I'll make the rest of you first timers look like rockstars once I have a chance to give this a shot :ROFLMAO:
I'm already intimidated, you and Jody both made something that resembles a cigar. That seems like a good start!
 

kit_luce

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Well. I gotta say, not often in life have I felt more humbled and frustrated. Not nearly as easy as it looks. Here's my first turd. I won't be giving up. Couldn't get a cap on it. Draw is akin to the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper, with maybe three or four squares of toilet paper lightly stuffed inside. Leaves were crumbling as I tried to roll. Obviously too dry. I'll pop em in a ziplock overnight with a spritz of water, try again tomorrow. Ugh.
Hell of a lot better than I could ever do
 
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Well. I gotta say, not often in life have I felt more humbled and frustrated. Not nearly as easy as it looks. Here's my first turd. I won't be giving up. Couldn't get a cap on it. Draw is akin to the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper, with maybe three or four squares of toilet paper lightly stuffed inside. Leaves were crumbling as I tried to roll. Obviously too dry. I'll pop em in a ziplock overnight with a spritz of water, try again tomorrow. Ugh.
Looks a lot better then mine. At least the one you rolled looks straight, mine had a taper to it and could barely draw air through it. I also screwed up the cap. I’m sure we will get better the more we do.

Jody
 
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Well. I gotta say, not often in life have I felt more humbled and frustrated. Not nearly as easy as it looks. Here's my first turd. I won't be giving up. Couldn't get a cap on it. Draw is akin to the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper, with maybe three or four squares of toilet paper lightly stuffed inside. Leaves were crumbling as I tried to roll. Obviously too dry. I'll pop em in a ziplock overnight with a spritz of water, try again tomorrow. Ugh.
Where did you get your piece of granite?


Stupid Tapatalk
 
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CHOCOLATE WORK!

Now, your gal sounds like a keeper.
I tell mine I married her for her gravy.
One day, a couple weeks before my wife and I had our first date, I was eating cookies (baked by my future bride) with the owner of the cafe where we both worked. We both agreed that whomsoever should marry her would be the luckiest man alive, based solely on her cookie prowess. Couple weeks later, she tricked me into dating her, and 13 days after that we got hitched! True story!
 
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Well. I gotta say, not often in life have I felt more humbled and frustrated. Not nearly as easy as it looks. Here's my first turd. I won't be giving up. Couldn't get a cap on it. Draw is akin to the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper, with maybe three or four squares of toilet paper lightly stuffed inside. Leaves were crumbling as I tried to roll. Obviously too dry. I'll pop em in a ziplock overnight with a spritz of water, try again tomorrow. Ugh.
So cool to see you take the jump my dude!
 
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Well, I gave it another try today. I'm kind of baffled by the filler. I'm having no problems with wrapper or binder, but having a crackly bunch that doesn't go limp turns into this:

That Indonesian seco is so very thin and brittle, that the slightest hint of moisture added started to make it limp, yet was still disintegrating when I tried to bunch it. What do now?
 
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Well, I gave it another try today. I'm kind of baffled by the filler. I'm having no problems with wrapper or binder, but having a crackly bunch that doesn't go limp turns into this:

That Indonesian seco is so very thin and brittle, that the slightest hint of moisture added started to make it limp, yet was still disintegrating when I tried to bunch it. What do now?
How long did you wait to start bunching after adding the moisture? Could be that is just some garbage leaf, but usually it takes a few hours for the moisture in the leaf to stabilize.
 
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This here test quickie was rolled with that same Indo seco:

Smoked it yesterday.

No idea how it got so flaky dry on you. Frosty weather will dry stuff for sure. Heaters are murder on leaf. I'll send you something else if you need. This time, I'll damp it up and seal it good inside one of Don's impermeable whole leaf tobacco bags. You want?
 
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This here test quickie was rolled with that same Indo seco:

Smoked it yesterday.

No idea how it got so flaky dry on you. Frosty weather will dry stuff for sure. Heaters are murder on leaf. I'll send you something else if you need. This time, I'll damp it up and seal it good inside one of Don's impermeable whole leaf tobacco bags. You want?
That's a kind offer, but let me fumble along for a while before you send more. I don't want to waste your good stuff.

@BrewinHooligan, this sat for around 30 hours from dampening till rolling attempt. I really have no idea how to dampen, though. I just spritzed the inside of the bag a little to let it absorb slowly.
 
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That's a kind offer, but let me fumble along for a while before you send more. I don't want to waste your good stuff.

@BrewinHooligan, this sat for around 30 hours from dampening till rolling attempt. I really have no idea how to dampen, though. I just spritzed the inside of the bag a little to let it absorb slowly.
Next time try giving every other leaf a quick spritz and let sit in the bag for at least a few hours and see if that works better.
 
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rolled my first couple tubular tobacco products today (I won't insult the rest of the cigars out there by calling these by the same name) they did not come out well, but I learned a lot. I've gone back and watched the video again, picked up more of the process and noticed a few places I went wrong. I'll give it another shot this week, at least I can't do any worse :) Just the smell of the leaf laid out on the table made this worth it.

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