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Those of us who do not possess a DrawMaster still possess lips. :kiss: :woot:
I started doing this at your urging. If the draw is tight on the bunch I've had moderate to good success fixing the issue by rolling the bunch between my fingers to find tight spots and/or use a long, straight piece of metal (either the poker on my pipe tool or a flattened paper clip) to poke through the "knot" in the bunch that causes the issue. It's a handmade product, sometimes despite our best efforts things go south. If it's not repairable, I just pitch it and move on. Some people may flame me for not saving the leaf as scrap, but for me, time is money and it's gonna take me more time and effort to try and roll with scraps than with whole leaf so I don't bother.
 
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This begs the Q: What leaf are you using?
Ecuadorian Seco wrapper
Dominican binder whole leaf
1.25 Nicaraguan Seco
.5 Corojo Viso
1.75 Criollo Ligero

Flavors were good. Just kept going out. And maybe I wasn't smoking it fast enough. I don't know.
I just figure after rolling 30 to 40 sticks I should have mastered it by now.
 
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You either had moisture issues, or you aren't layering the leaf in the most ideal way to promote combustion. As you make your bunch, you want the slower burning leaf (ligero typically) in the middle, and the faster burning leaf (usually seco or volado) as far towards the outside as possible. I hope I explained that in a way that makes sense.
 
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You either had moisture issues, or you aren't layering the leaf in the most ideal way to promote combustion. As you make your bunch, you want the slower burning leaf (ligero typically) in the middle, and the faster burning leaf (usually seco or volado) as far towards the outside as possible. I hope I explained that in a way that makes sense.
Perfect sense. Bunching that way has always been the goal. Maybe things got off or out of wack. I don't think moisture was the issue but could be wrong. @Gdaddy and I have been working on a drying process using just a vacuum. I pulled over a gram of moisture out of the stick after rolling it. And maybe @blisscigarco had it. It was very humid that night. Even rained for a few minutes. I'll roll a few more and try again.
On the bright side the draw was damn near perfect.
 
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Perfect sense. Bunching that way has always been the goal. Maybe things got off or out of wack. I don't think moisture was the issue but could be wrong. @Gdaddy and I have been working on a drying process using just a vacuum. I pulled over a gram of moisture out of the stick after rolling it. And maybe @blisscigarco had it. It was very humid that night. Even rained for a few minutes. I'll roll a few more and try again.
On the bright side the draw was damn near perfect.
A rainy humid night can do it. So can slow smoking.

Like Bliss said... make sure the cigar is dry by pulling the vacuum down until it stops losing weight. The point where you can't get anything else out of it. Even then, since the wrapper would carry the most moisture, if you could let it sit after vacuum in an AC room over night it would dry out the wrapper and binder and smoke it the next day.

The fun of cigar rolling (to me) is all the experimentation and blending stuff. Failure is certainly part of the learning process.
 
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FYI.... Theflask has a vacuum pump so he responded to my microwave post. I've come up with a drying method that doesn't use the microwave and only uses the vacuum. In a vacuum, water will boil at room temperature. So this has worked well for me and apparently worked well for Theflask on his first try.

The use of a digital scale is the method I use to measurement how much water is leaving the cigar.

It will dry a new rolled cigar in a half an hour or less but I let them dry box over night in an AC room @54% rh. to make sure the wrapper is perfectly dry.
 
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