Another Way to Cut Whole Leaf

[makhorkasmoker]

Is not to cut at all.

Tear off a few pieces of whatever tobacco leaf you’re in the mood for. I chose some air cured varieties for this post




Roll or even wad them up



Stick it in your pipe and enjoy

I started doing this because I noticed the rougher/coarser the cut, the more I enjoyed the smoke.

Then an idea came: what if I didn’t cut it at all?

I thought it wouldn’t burn well. Just the opposite. It burns slower than ribbon cut or “rough cut”. It requires fewer relights. Flavor, for me, is out of this world—superior to all the other cuts I’ve tried

The only downside is bagging up blends. The pieces of leaf are so large that it would be easy to wind up with all or mostly one sort of leaf in a smoke. I’m thinking about how to solve that problem

 

[rakovsky]

I got whole leaf from a friend. One was perique and it was big, so I needed to tear a piece.
I tried whole leaf with scissor cutting and hand tearing and either way it worked. Scissor cutting seemed to work better for getting it lit and avoiding a clump on the bottom that didn't burn.

 

[bullet08]

If you're just smoking that leaf, that's fine. But if you are into mixed lot of tobacco, it would be rather crowded. Also, the smoking would be uneven as far as the taste/favor is concerned.

 

[menpachiman]

Here is what I experimented with years back for "uncut" blends. Basically a smokeable rope.

For large leaves, moistened tobacco with spray bottle. Remove mid-rib. Used rolling pin to flatten it out. Separated thin (lower) from thick leaves. Some oriental leaves are small so it takes too long to flatten out.

I experimented with virginia sweet, samsun, izmir,and perique. Also used sprinkles of bulk ribbon perique, latakia.

Blend as you would as with cigar making. Tube or bunch. Blend the amounts to suit your taste. Bunch smaller oriental leaves. If you add thinner leaves, it facilitates even burning as with blending seco or volado in cigars. I basically made a cigar-like rope. Make your rope to fit your pipe diameter. I used Virginia as binder. I preferred cigar wrapper like CT shade or PA. Let it dry out/cure.

Cut into nubs to smoke. Would this be similar to an uncut blend?

Being too lazy these days, I simply chiffonade it into ribbons, blend it, and press it.