Musings on Fold and Stuff

A tip that's worked wonders for me is once you've folded the flake in half longways and then in half from side to side let it rest on your middle finger between your pointer and ring fingers and use your thumb to break it up a bit near the bottom or crease of the fold. This helps more air get into the bowl and keeps the ember going better/longer.

The biggest advantage to folding and stuffing as opposed to rubbing out that I've found is that the smoke lasts a lot longer. For me the hardest thing is to judge how much of the flake will fit, you've got to be careful not to use too much or it will pack the bowl too tight and you get no airflow. When that happens instead of a long, relaxing smoke, I end up with a short duration rage-fest that ends with a dumped bowl and wasted tobacco.

I lack the patience, but I want to fold and stuff. It will take a particularly serene day and mood for me. When I crack that tin or open that jar and that sweet fragrance comes waltzing out, I don't want to start negotiating with a square flake, I want a robust draw of smoke. But I will try this, maybe with a second bowl after a different blend. The sustained burn and the white ash sound really pleasing. Thanks for this post.

This method works particularly well even with very wet flake. Hope you can understand Tamper's accent!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFRlBqlUDtQ

I'm done with fold and stuff. For the last few months I've been focusing on packing light (gravity + a final, tight pinch insert at the top) and all my pipes have consistently given me a great smoke, with little dottle left. Not a lot of relights either.
I rub flakes (or slices) - I'm probably inserting less tobacco than I would with fold and stuff, but it's happily working for me.

The only thing worse than overpacking tobacco is overthinking it. Scrunch up some flake, stick it in the pipe, smoke it. If you pay attention to what you're doing, in 2-3 bowls you'll have it down by experience. Which btw is not a synonym for repetition. I used to advertise for employees with minimum 10 years experience. Most of the guys who applied had spent 9 years repeating the same mistakes they failed to identify and correct in year one.

I haven't had much luck with the fold and stuff but perhaps I'm due to try it again soon. ::

My first really wonderful fold and stuff experience occurred when I smoked a single coin of Escudo in one of my pipes (I can't remember which one!) and it was my first taste of this legendary blend.

I approached it with a reverence and anticipation that I'd developed from reading many posts on Escudo's excellence and lit it with a match, but just barely.

I sipped it slowly and let those flavors waft over my tongue and through my nostrils, and forgot about keeping it lit. I just sipped...slowly...and magically, it just kept burning, slowly, and providing me with a bowl of pure pipe euphoria.

Those hard hitting initial lights are not conducive to optimum flavor, I think, because they over heat the tobacco and burn through qualities it would otherwise deliver.

First, I love me some Tamper Peterson he is simply a hoot to watch! I fold and stuff and rub out flakes also. Depends on my mood. Either way is quite good!

Fold and stuff, indeed flake tobacco in general, took me some time. It's like learning to smoke a pipe all over again.
My first attempts were disasters with dozens of relights and a lot of unsmoked tobacco in the bottom of the bowl. In fact, I simply stopped and did not smoke any flake for a while. Months later, almost magically, it started to work. I wish that I could tell folks what I did differently and why it works now, but I can't. A lot of it is just feel. Like packing loose cut tobacco, after a while you don't think about it, you just do it, and it works.
Nevertheless, a few musings on flake tobacco from someone who is just starting to get the hang of it:
(1) keep at it, you'll get it: it's not rocket surgery.

(2) keep at it, you'll get it: it's not rocket surgery. (This is so important that it had to be listed twice!)

(3) flake tends to be moist and dries slowly (compared to loose cut) and most will benefit from some drying. (I suspect that this is part of the reason why I failed initially, then had some success many months later -- the flake dried in the interim.)

(4) coins, like Escudo, (do these really count as flake? Luxury Bullseye Flake is called flake, but is a coin? What do I know?) seem easier to me than other flake tobaccos -- they seem less compressed as a rule and maybe are a good intermediate between loose cut and other flake tobacco.

(5) I fold so that the bunch is a bit longer than the depth of the bowl, then I insert and sort of twist to screw it into the bowl and, assuming there is not too much excess, crush the excess down into the top of the bowl. This last bit of crushing is sort of like music's putting some rubbed out tobacco at the top to help ignition.

(6) as with loose cut, your goal is not to cram as much tobacco as humanly possible into one bowl. Flake is already dense so don't over-pack. If you are grunting and sweating and using the bench vise to get all of the tobacco into the bowl, you are over-doing it.
The headaches and problems really will go away with continued practice. Keep at it and good luck. The slow burn of a nice flake is a noticeably different experience than smoking loose cut tobacco and is worth some effort.

I would guess that the most common difficulty is with packing too tightly.

There is an inherent density to flakes that requires room for expansion.

Erring on the side of caution might be advisable and preferable to over packing.

I gave up on fold n stuff. Now I simply rub it and it works everytime, provided the tobaco is dry enough.

I fold and stuff with certain thinner and more pliable flakes like Fribourg & Treyer Cut Virginia Plug, John Aylesbury Luxury flake and others. A flake like Mac Baren Old Dark Fired I will cube cut as it is a very dense flake. Cube cutting is a great way to smoke flakes so give it a shot if fold and stuff is frustrating you.

If you laid all the flake tobacco Harris has end-to-end, it would circle the earth...

:D Earth would look like Saturn with all of Harris' flakes ringed around it.
I've never had much luck with fold and stuff. I still try once in a while but for flakes I like the cube cut method the best.

I have tried fold and stuff in a variety of ways: fold the layers evenly, then twist into something that resembles a roach (the crawling kind, and not the other you might be thinking of); fold a quarter and then back on itself and then rolled up to stuff; folded in exactly half and stuffed; folded and used the Frank method of stuffing, etc.

And, I’ve tried Harris’s cube cut. It works really, really well, providing a tasty smoke.

But, when I’’m lazy, I fold the flakes in half, and then over and rub them out and then stuff into my pipe.

With meers, I fold and stuff flakes, never rub out or cube cut. Don’t know why, but it just makes for a better smoke IMHO.

That’s my two.

For me personally it's all down to the tobacco. I prefer flakes hands down over twists,plugs,shag cut everything. However, St. Bruno flake for example works better for me fully rubbed out. Whilst capstan & other flakes taste,smoke & perform miles better with a gentle tweek,fold & stuff. Some flakes you get are too thick to fold,stuff & smoke as you would like. Plus the size of your bowl is paramount to the task in hand. It's all trial & error,getting to know your pipes, & flakes.