I'm really impressed with your homemade presses and great pictures of every step of your process. I hope your flake smokes well enough to justify all the work you put into the project!
I'm not impressed with J. Patton "Cool Hand Fluke." I've smoked about 2-300g trying to like it as it was my first high-perique blend, but in the end the massive amount of perique, for me, is not well-integrated with the VA. For me it's like smoking a big lump of perique along side of decent VAs. As regards the rest of his blends, so many are simply rearrangements of each other, this one with latakia and the other with the same components and percentages without it, CHF with 40% perique and "Quadruple VA" with the same mix without the perique. I'm not saying that any of his blends are not worthy but feel blending skills could be better used. Instead of taking shortcuts to round out the roster of blends, why not concentrate on the skills needed to make something different.
C and D Chenet's Cake has 35% perique yet that amount does not overwhelm the VA and burley and is integrated with it. To me it is head and shoulders a better blend. I've not tried the Nat Sherman blend and don't have much impetus to do given the excellence of C. Cake.
BTW, I called Keith Toney at smokingpipes.com and plugged for a plug version. He didn't seem enthusiastic, but the benefits of plug vs. crumble cake should be easily realized were it a plug, given the additional pressure and melding that would ensue.