It's a Beautiful Thing

[georged]

 

[shanez]

Wafer thin! (ala John Cleese)

 

[jaytex1969]

That is AMAZING!

How is that contraption turning those flakes back into a plug?

 

[georged]

Magic

 

[cossackjack]

Yes, enchanting.
What manner of plug is that? One of your own creation or commercial?
More photos of the flakes & the tobacco cutter, please, especially the blade of such wonder.

 

[georged]

What manner of plug is that? One of your own creation or commercial?
More photos of the flakes & the tobacco cutter, please, especially the blade of such wonder.

It's off-the-shelf Kendal Plug.

The cutter is a hot-rodded general store rope cutter from the early 20th century. Though cast iron, those things weren't a deluxe product. Staked and riveted together, thin & flexy blade, etc. Not capable of thinly slicing a plug. They were intended only to cut off a requested length of rope.

Such cutters are capable of being enhanced to a fairly high level, though. A 2.5X thicker blade sharpened "sushi knife style" (on the far side only), blade guide slot dressed/enlarged, the brass blade stop ground flush and dead-level, and alignment guides installed (platform and rail).

This one now outperforms a good condition specialized plug slicer that I also have (one of the rounded blade, deck-of-cards sized ones). The plug in the pics was 6" long, 3" wide, and 1.5" thick---which would have had to have been both chunked and split before being fed to the little guy, and would have still gotten torn a bit.

 

[cossackjack]

Exceptional, as usual.
Thank you, @georged.

 

[didimauw]

That's awesome. Sometimes the work adds to the fun.