Absolute Best Knife For Cutting Plugs
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Great ideas everyone! I use a Spyderco Endura pocketknife that I keep nice and sharp.
Not sure what's going on with this one.
To stay on topic, I use a good 8" chef's knife for most of my plug chopping for now. Considering options but it's an occasional affair, so no urgency.
To stay on topic, I use a good 8" chef's knife for most of my plug chopping for now. Considering options but it's an occasional affair, so no urgency.
I am hoping at the end of the discussion I will end up with a recommendation for a plug cutter.
- Only 5% of my smokes are plugs. I will use it only 2 /3 times a year
- I am not worried that it maintains its cutting edge, but at least it should come with a sharp edge
- Child proof if possible. My 5 year old has an uncanny ability to ramshackle through all my pipes and tobaccos. In fact he often treats my home office as his playroom. If not child proof, then I need to hide it in the kitchen which he does not find interesting
Can't hep wondering what sort of knives men used to use back in the days when Plug/Rope tobaccies were smoked in larger scale than today, I'd bet mainly they have opted for standard pocket folding knives
My fish filet knife works well. They make cordless electric versions that could be useful for those with grip or arthritis issues.
I think so. I don't think people were so fancy about some things the way we are now. I'm not speaking for anyone or pointing the finger to anybody, but it seems to me that, at least to a point, in looking for 'the best tool' we are just looking for an excuse to spend yet more money on more gear, when the stuff that we have at hand can handle the job without a problem.
I don't have arthritis, so this isn't advice for those with it, but I forgot to mention something in my previous post. The skiving knife can be used in two ways: you can hold the plug with one hand and use the knife to slice it, or you can hold the knife steady and slide the plug towards it, whatever suits your preferences or hands best. Of course, the latter only works when the knife is very, very sharp. I reckon the slicing plug procedure can be done with almost any knife, provided it's sharp as a scalpel.
You may as well try one of these.
When it comes to slicing blade geometry is everything. When the entire blade is this thin it's going to slice well. The only thing I can think of that would really compete is the shaving straight razor.
OLFA blades are well hardened so the edge should hold reasonably well, and there's nothing stopping you from sharpening it on a stone either.
When it comes to slicing blade geometry is everything. When the entire blade is this thin it's going to slice well. The only thing I can think of that would really compete is the shaving straight razor.
OLFA blades are well hardened so the edge should hold reasonably well, and there's nothing stopping you from sharpening it on a stone either.
Took me a while, but I found this remembrance of when Irish plugs were smoked by old Irishmen. The original source it came from is no longer accessible on the web. This excerpt is from a thread by someone who goes by the name philofumo on various forums.
“The wise men with Barbours could pare tobacco, cut scallops for thatching, and even castrate pigs with their blades - Cormac on the Rolls Royce of pocket knives:
Barbour knives were special instruments in the world I grew up in the day before yesterday. Only special men, learned men, invariably pipesmokers, owned and used them. They were not for schoolboys nor for most ordinary men. Schoolboys possessed cheap gaudy-flanked penknives, usually supplied by Santa Claus. A remarkable number of these had the figure of a Canadian Mountie in his red jacket inscribed on them. All had bright silver blades. All of the blades were so blunt that you could not cut butter with them in midsummer. That's a fact.
The Barbour men in our parish would come into our country shop late in the evenings of my boyhood. They came to buy their Half-Quarters. Yes, that's not an error, they would ask you for a Half-Quarter. This was plug tobacco. It came in four ounce blocks, powerfully aromatic and compacted, and the Half-Quarter was the half of one - two ounces. We had a special little guillotine thing for cutting the block exactly in half. You needed that because every fraction of an ounce was special. The eyes watching the guillotine were as sharp as the blades of the Barbour - maybe even sharper!
You'd cut and they'd pay and they'd always fill their pipe before leaving the shop, hipped against the wooden counter, hand fishing into the frock coat pocket, (yes frock coat! - to us a jacket), and you'd watch like a hawk, with amazement, with awe even, at the ease with which either of the two Barbour blades pared off the whorls of redolent tobacco from a plug whose trade name was Walnut and whose surface was just as hard. No problem at all to the Sheffield blades.
They just glided through it, the opening element of a ritual which afterwards saw the shavings of plug being ground into a soft fibrous mass between two horny palms, effortlessly, the opened knife pointing skywards the while, and then the bowl of the pipe being filled, the match applied. And, most often, the steel storm lid being put over the bowl before the smoking Barbour man set off for home on his High Nellie bicycle, tendrils of smoke trailing behind.
I see them now, kings of the Raleigh bike saddles, tall spare men, belted gabardine coats and hats, proud and dignified on their own range as the Mounties on the plasticated flanks of our blunt penknives.”
I like this idea. It’d be pretty easy to cut off exactly what you want. Even with arthritis I imagine you could position a tool like that over your plug, hold it in place and give it a good tap or two on top.
Plus easy to sharpen and my wife would be unlikely to appropriate it for kitchen duty.
This is what I use to cut plugs and ropes. Curly Block fits perfectly in the slot. The blade ratchets down on the plug and doesn't take a lot of effort. You do have to hold the plug in place to cut the flakes squarely.
As I was watching the wife shaving wafer thin slices of Parmesan cheese offa rock hard wedge in the kitchen today an evil but genius idea popped into my brain ....
When she’s not looking I’m gonna snag that thing and prep a small bowl of Salty Dog.
If I don’t post again you will all know what happened and hopefully won’t share my unlucky fate. ?
Should it prove useful I’ll post my findings.
When she’s not looking I’m gonna snag that thing and prep a small bowl of Salty Dog.
If I don’t post again you will all know what happened and hopefully won’t share my unlucky fate. ?
Should it prove useful I’ll post my findings.
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