American Plug Tobacco

[cosmicfolklore]

So, I can order pipe tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, ecigs and Dokha... I can order snus and chew... but not these plugs?
Is it just Northerner?

According to the USPS website... "Most cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products may not be mailed domestically or internationally."

It is my understanding that they stopped the mailing of chewing tobacco when the FDA got involved a few years ago. However, some companies may operate with blinders to this.

 

[mawnansmiff]

What I find so annoying is that though no proper plugs are currently made in the US, the old fashioned cast iron plug cutters (of which I desperately hanker after) are for sale aplenty on Ebay in the States.
I really would love to have and use one but obviously due to their weight p+p would be horrendous!
More pertinent to the O/P, the plethora of these old plug cutters in the States can only suggest that at one time proper plugs were indeed being made there and evidently made in quantity.
Regards,
Jay.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Those plug cutters also cut an improper "American plug" very well. I even remember the General Store that used to cut chewing tobaccos by the oz for customers. The owner would buy twists made locally or large cakes of tobacco and cut customers off a plug as they needed.

 

[davet]

the old fashioned cast iron plug cutters (of which I desperately hanker after) are for sale aplenty on Ebay in the States.

I would have thought they would be at least as common in the UK. It might be easier to have one made at a local welding shop, mine is fairly basic.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Davet, I did at one point entertain the idea of making my own but would much rather have a proper antique one.
Regards,
Jay.

 

[toobfreak]

No need to buy a plug cutter unless you are simply after collecting tobacciana esoterica. In case you have not noticed, the plug cutter shown above is just a glorified chef's knife---- with a hinge at one end. It is designed for the person cutting plug in high volume all day long. If you want to cut plug, a sharp chef's knife will do it just fine. In fact I have my father's old photographic paper cutter made circa 1940's to 1950's and that would probably do the job too.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Jay is talking about real Irish plugs, the consistency of hockey pucks, not those easy to cut American plugs. Condor, Warrior, and Velvan, I can cut with my pocket knife, but with some force. It's more like shaving linoleum than cutting off a hunk. And, I have to clean the thing afterwards to get the sticky thick tar off of it.

 

[davet]

In case you have not noticed, the plug cutter shown above is just a glorified chef's knife---- with a hinge at one end. It is designed for the person cutting plug in high volume all day long.

OK, glorified chef's knife? It's a plug cutter. Designed for cutting high volume all day? I'm quite sure it's the opposite, for cutting the occasional plug in a store.

Perhaps you're right and I'm wrong :roll:

 

[toobfreak]

Where can I get these Irish Plugs today if I wanted to smoke something the consistency of linoleum? I thought this thread was about american plug tobacco? And yes, the plug cutter works on the same basic principle as a chef's knife-- the fixed fulcrum simply gives you more leverage more easily to apply more force with less fatigue. I would think you can cut most any plug with varying degrees of ease with a plug cutter, chef's knife, hand or table shear, or even an axe, if the cutting is what you are after. If all of those cannot cut through the damn thing, I wonder how you are going to light it? ::

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Well, the conversation is flowing back and forth between Irish plugs and American attempts at plugs. You can find Dan's Salty Dog here in the states, but the rest you'd have to order from Europe.
Yeh, that plug cutter pictured doesn't have a very good fulcrum for getting most fluid power from the stroke. I would probably look for something that has the offset fulcrum or guillotine action.

 

[davet]

Anyways, back to American plugs.....
Amazing number of brands I've never heard of

Another Canadian

 

[pipeman7]

All the images seem to be cut plugs (essentially flakes)

 

[davet]

All the images seem to be cut plugs (essentially flakes)

We were talking of plugs American/UK and such and one point brought up was that a cut plug/flake was at one time a plug :mrgreen: I started the thread about American plugs but as tends to happen here wandered off the garden path. It's kind of morphed into old blends plug and cut plug from North America. For the most part I'm trying to find info and not just pictures but as I've found something interesting shared it. ::

 

[pipeman7]

I know I'm just saying, from the images it doesn't seem like many plugs were being sold in the US even back in the early 1900s

 

[cosmicfolklore]

When you cut an Irish plug, it does not make a flake like what we know flakes to be. This was what started the whole UK v US plugs thing on another thread. It has been said that the plugs in the US are merely uncut flakes... or something along those lines.

 

[davet]

I suppose it can be attributed to plugs back in the day were mostly sold in bulk and cut at the point of sale. No tins to find in basements and barns perhaps. From the Civil War up to the early 1900's tins may not have been that common, just imagine going to the store and they would cut your block of cheese off of a wheel. The drugstore actually mixed up concoctions from bulk ingredients 8O Just spitballin here but sounds reasonable.

 

[davet]

Cosmic, Wessex Gold Brick Virginia seems to be in between the two, looks like a really thick slice :mrgreen:

 

[toobfreak]

I kind of wish they still DID cut my cheese from the wheel and mixed my stuff up right in front of me from bulk ingredients (and I could both trust them to do so and they were unregulated enough to do it), but if all the plugs shown were still available, I'd be a pretty happy camper. Looks like stuff I'd want to smoke. So where did the market on that stuff go?
Anyone have a picture of what this Irish plug stuff looked like out of the can on the table?
Why do they call this the Era of Progress yet everything I see of old that is no long around and long gone always look so much better to me? :crying:
At any rate, with all the talk on a different thread about how hard flake is to deal with and rubbing it out, I wonder how folks smoked this Irish Plug? I have to assume it merely starts out something like American Plug but is then compacted under far greater pressure and maybe heat and time to form "brick floor tile". :mrgreen:

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Yep. It was in the 1900's that industrialization got the ball rolling on packaging of everything. Stores became compartmentalized, instead of having a butcher or a produce man on the block, and the country folks just had General stores where people met up to trade goods they made or grew. It was seen as a failure of sorts to buy stuff when you could have grown it. But... the radio came around, and people started wanting Martha White flour, because the box told them to, and then the mailman brought them the Sears and Roebuck Catalog.
Civil War times, people down here didn't have anything that they couldn't grow or find on the ground or make. If you couldn't grow it, and wasn't one of the 1% that could afford to go get it, then you just didn't have it.

There was a story that I saw about someone asking questions of a man who lived during the Civil War. TVs and movies tell us that people would crush burned acorns to make coffee, or used chicory, because of the war. And, the old man rolled his eyes, and said, "Maybe some rich plantation owners did that, but we didn't even know what coffee was during the war."

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Why do they call this the Era of Progress yet everything I see of old that is no long around and long gone always look so much better to me?

Because some people are never happy. They long for the greener grass on the other side. They did back then, and now people look back and long from where they came. Ultimately, we live in times of magical marvels. You can go back to lice, nasty smells, people throwing their feces into the roads, horse crap, etc... I'm happy as hell with being able to set in my little cabin the woods and order four pounds of tobacco from a little bity box that fits in my pocket, and have it delivered right to my shack in the trees. And, I get to talk to you, here, on this forum. I cannot even fathom going back to squalor. The trick is just being happy. Nothing can "make" someone happy. You just have to "be it."