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Brain storming session. Your input is requested.

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FmGrowit

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I've been curious about this myself and today I had a customer ask
Is there anything that can be done to the leaf we would use as a wrapper when we get it, such as ‘rolling” it out or pressing it somehow? We have watched films of it being used & it always seems that the outer leaf is pre “processed” somewhat.
My reply was
I think a soft brush would help in flattening out the leaf or two roller brushes with long soft bristles rotating in opposite directions. Feed the leaf into the brushes until the leaf is smooth. The trick will be finding bristles soft enough to work without tearing the leaf. After the leaf is smooth, you'll have to put some weight on it to prevent it from shriveling up again. I'd put a paper towel between each wrapper and after you get 30 wrappers flattened out, roll them up around a paper towel roll or something like that and wrap that in plastic, then refrigerate until needed.
Now, does anyone know of an existing machine that can be converted to using these types of roller brushes? It wouldn't be horribly difficult to make one from scratch, but if something already exists, why reinvent it.


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Does anyone have another idea to create the same end result. I too have seen the videos where the wrapper is already flat and stacked up in a neat pile, so the cigar industry is already doing it.
 

Daniel

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As far as making a brush. Although I agree there would be a lot of effort involved. It is doable. It also gives you a wide range of bristle choices. Horse hair makes the softest brooms. Badger hair makes the finest shaving brushes. From there you can progress to course types of hair and synthetics bristle materials. as for the method of actually making a roller brush it is not difficult to find out how to do it but is time consuming. Fine for making prototypes but not feasible for production. Short on time I will try to add more later.
 

FmGrowit

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The brushes are available from a lot of sources, I'm looking for the mechanism that will spin the brushes. Determining the bristle density will be a little trial and error, but I think the manufacturer can provide some help with that.

I was thinking of something like a surface planer feed rollers, but that's to expensive. Something light enough to be powered by a drill motor would be strong enough...I think.
 

deluxestogie

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A Luddite's Lament

SUMMARY: Less is More.

I believe that what you're seeing in the cigar factory videos is a requirement of a low per-item profit industry, where each employee tightens the same lug nut a thousand times a day. One person's job is to flatten wrapper and binder leaves with a steam press similar to what is (?was) used in commercial laundries to press clothing. Another person sits all day and, one at a time, feeds a pre-flattened leaf into a de-stemmer. Then the pre-flattened, de-stemmed leaf strips are sent to the casing room, where an employee watches the temp and RH. Each bulk roller is provided with pre-measured quantities of the filler leaf blend and a counted quantity of pre-flattened, de-stemmed, pre-cased binder. These are rolled, and placed into the molds and put under pressure, and are no longer of concern to the bulk roller. Now, the pre-flattened, de-stemmed, pre-rolled, uniformly pre-shaped cylindrical bulks are sent to the "master torcedor," who effortlessly rolls it within a pre-flattened, de-stemmed, pre-cased wrapper strip, while being captured on video. (Easy solution to the initial question is, "Be that last guy.")

Some varieties of leaf, as sold in commercial quantities, are frog-legged (1/2 the stem removed) and packed into flat stacks at the tobacco grower's or leaf distributor's facilities for shipment to commercial customers.

Another cigar industry preference is for wrapper and binder leaf that is not wavy at the margins, or recurved. This is one element that has influenced how the government assigns a CLASS to a variety of tobacco. When we grow at home, we get all sorts of wonderful leaf, with arcs, ripples, waves, recurves and holes.

I believe that all that is required for a home roller to make an excellent (smokable and attractive) cigar, other than excellent tobacco, is to get his rumpled wrapper and binder leaves into case, de-stem them, then roll the cigar. No press, no de-stemmer, no mold. If, on the other hand, a home-grower wishes to employ low-wage workers to roll large quantities of uniform size cigars, and sell them for a profit, then the assembly line processes might be helpful.

On the matter of rollers to flatten the veins of the wrapper leaf, this only matters if you are attempting to sell cigars. The cigar smoking public has been seduced by the small veins of CT Shade wrapper, and has come to expect the same from the thick-veined Ecuador Sumatra, Habano and CT Broadleaf wrapped cigars. The industrial answer is to steamroller the leaf that has prominent veins. For the home grower/roller, this is pointless, since wrapper leaf with un-squished veins rolls into a cigar just as well, when properly cased, and smokes at least as well.

Bob
 

FmGrowit

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Well that wasn't very helpful :D, but thanks for the history lesson. I hope you don't mind me using this when one of my customers accuses me of selling wrinkled leaves.

Another one of my customers is supposed to send me a video of how they do it by hand. I shall post it here when I get it....(I still think the brush idea is a good one ;))
 

BigBonner

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How about an old ringer washer machine ? The wringer has rubber rollers . They could be converted to brushes if needed and the ringer has a reverse .I think they are 14 to 16 inches wide . They turn slow .
 

deluxestogie

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You might enclose with each leaf shipment a one-sheet explanation of how to prepare the leaf for various uses, and also post that on the wholeLeaf website.

I suppose that if you simply need to flatten leaf for sale/shipment, then the old rubber wringers from a pre-1950s washing machine would do the trick on well cased leaf, and remove excess moisture in the process. They had an electric or hand-crank driven roller, geared at one end to a counter-roller, which had a tension adjustment on the opposite end. Unfortunately, the geometry of most leaf varieties that are not Spanish-derived, prevents them from lying flat in a plane, without creases and wrinkles.

Plan B is to just tie them into hands, and ship them fully extended. List them as being tied in "traditional hands."

Here's my contribution to a handout. It's a cruddy, wrinkled filler leaf, cased and prepared as a wrapper.
PreparedWrapper_20110830_02_600.jpg

Bob
 

FmGrowit

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I'm not going to offer "roll ready" wrappers, there has to be some expectation of doing some work. Maybe way down the road, if demand requires preflattened wrappers, I'll consider doing it.
 

Chicken

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i made a video of me rolling my first cigar about 4 weeks ago,,,,

i could post it,,,,,but it by no means would be a instructional video,,,,

just me making one,,, and i must say it turned out good,,,, for me never doing it before,
 

Jitterbugdude

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Tell 'em to get a pasta maker. The used ones on eBay are dirt cheap. I use one for shredding tobacco for cigarettes. It works PERFECT. They typically have 3 rollers on them. One, the spaghetti noodle roller is the one that shreds perfectly for cigarettes. The lasagna one will flatten a tobacco leaf very nicely, and it has a tension adjustment knob on the side to increase/decrease the width of the space between the rollers. But, to be realistic, unless you are growing shade tobacco the easiest thing to do is pick thru your bundle of leaves and use the thin ones for wrappers and the thicker ones for binders.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ROMA-WESTON...all_Kitchen_Appliances_US&hash=item25635ad218
 

Chrism

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Hey jitter, thanks for mentioning the pasta maker. My flatten out real good. I'll find out.
 

Chicken

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i was thinking about this thread today at work,,,,

i know ive seen '' CHEF GORDON RAMSAY'' use a device to flatten dough out,,, before going into the spagetti maker,,,,

maybe that would work good to flatten out a leaf,,???????

though i bet it would be expensive,,,,

>or the rollers to a old type washing machine,,,,< and im sure if you had 2 dough rollers the wooden ones with handles on each end,, you could make something that would work,??????

{ me and my redneck ideas}lol
 

Cerasaan

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I suppose that if you simply need to flatten leaf for sale/shipment, then the old rubber wringers from a pre-1950s washing machine would do the trick on well cased leaf, and remove excess moisture in the process.

I suppose the old rubber wringers would crush the midribs too.
 

SmokesAhoy

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Maybe even a grain roller for making oatmeal out of whole gains
 
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