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Proper Blend Proportions?

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Coconutnut

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Hi all! I'm new to the group and figured I'd get some expert advice on the proper leaf filler proportions.
I've ordered a few whole leaf blends from WLT, and recently rolled the Azucarado Oscuro II blend. The finished product was great, but I was a little confused with the proper recipe for the blend. On the package it indicated 2 parts:1 part:1 part to make 18-20 cigars. I took that to mean that I should blend 2 whole Seco leaves with 1 Flojo Viso leaf and 1 Ligero leaf. The cigars that were produced that way were excellent, but there was not enough tobacco to make 18-20 cigars. I ended up making only 13 "standard sized" cigars with this ratio as there wasn't enough Flojo Viso or Ligero to make 18 that way, while there was plenty of left over Seco. Don at WLT wasn't very helpful and just referred me to this group. My question is, for a standard rolled cigar with a 2:1:1 ratio, do you roll 4 whole leaves to make 1 cigar, or do you lay out the filler contents and divide them up 20 ways to that you get 20 cigars, or is there a better way yo do this? I'm just a home roller, so weighing out 2:1:1 isn't possible for each cigar. Also, I would think that weight would be somewhat inaccurate if the filler leaves were in various states of hydration. Help me out...
 

greenmonster714

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Welcome to FTT. Drop in on the introduction thread and tell us more about yourself and it's a good idea to post where your located. Nothing specific just a state or country. I think Don may have helped you more than you think he did. He certainly steered you in the right direction. I am not a seasoned cigar roller. Just a pipe for me right now but I do see cigars in the near future. I am sure someone will pipe in on this question soon. Again, welcome aboard.
 

Smokin Harley

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Welcome to FTT. I've been in here a few years now and roll so I will try to help you. That blend ratio given 2:1:1 should work out right or at least closer to as least leftover leaves as possible. If you stuck to that and had that much left over outside the intended ratio , I might think at first the person who packed the order may have gone by weight rather than single leaf to single leaf proportions,which would make more sense as leaves do vary in size within the packages. Some come a little tattered and are more fitted as pieces to fill a soft spot prior to finishing the bunch. Might I suggest buying a postal scale ,they come digital and fairly affordable. OTOH, Some people prefer a smaller cigar and that kit might have been meant to roll a smaller cigar . This is good and bad . Youre just getting started ,no worries . Develop your rolling technique to have a smokeable cigar first that draws and burns well,and although a cigar should look nice in its construction(form follows function), worry about looks later. Cigars if made correctly can be smoked with only a binder. We'll get to this eventually. Bob, Deluxestogie, smokes many of his sans wrapper quite often. Did you run short on wrapper? wrapper only really needs to be a strip around 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide if cut from the leaf and applied correctly .As Bob many times says to new rollers , "roll one , smoke one" , before rolling out a whole dozen and find you need to work on your technique before blending and then find as you have that the blend you thought doesnt match the leaves in your kit.
Definitely edit your profile and include your location .Quite possibly there is another member close to you that may be able to help you in a more personal setting. Sometimes its hard to see what is going on in a video where an actual at the table demonstration clarifies something that videoed hands get in the way . Good luck ,it'll get easier .
SH
 

deluxestogie

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Welcome to the forum. Don gave you the perfect advice: join in this forum.

My best advice: relax, and enjoy the fun of being able to smoke your very own, home-rolled cigars. All of the ratios are just guestimations. I like to think of cigar blending (and pipe blending) in the same way as a pot of stew that you ladle into a bowl. Each ladleful will be your very own stew, but each bowl will have slightly different ratios of potato, carrot, peas and meat. Savor the differences, and learn what you prefer.

For cigars, seco leaf (large and thin, from the lower stalk) improves combustion, and reduces the nicotine strength. Ligero (smaller and thicker, from the top of the stalk--and viso, which is between seco and ligero) slows the combustion, while cranking up the nicotine. If you want a particular shipment to result in a specific number of cigars of the same size, then you'll have to just do the math. But I wouldn't bother.

It's an educational exercise to roll puros from some or all of the varieties that you have. That is to say, roll a cigar of all one variety, and see what it offers and what it lacks. A seco puro may seem bland and boring. A ligero puro may lay you flat on your back. Make adjustments. Discover what you prefer. And most of all, have a good journey in the process.

WLT's blend kits are a starting point for your excursion. The next step is to purchase some of the individual variety offerings, and explore the freedom of making your own stew.

And as a real bonus, any filler leaf that seems intact enough can be tried as a wrapper, which will always provide a flavor that is different from that of "wrapper" leaf. Check your excess seco for some wrapper-grade leaf.

Bob
 

ras_oscar

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I roll 2 sizes of cigar. Both *generally* take 3 leaves to make a filler bunch. I do 1 seco, 1 visio 1 ligero. Having said that, remember that tobacco leaf is a natural product. Sometimes I need to supplement sometimes I need to trim off the get the doll in the mold. I keep a scrap pile on the side of the board to make these adjustments. With a little practice I can finish a rolling session ( 10 dolls) with the scrap pile empty
 

webmost

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Yeah, I have no clue what constitutes a "standard cigar". The coronas I roll usually require three leaves total -- depending the size of the leaf. The perfectos I roll generally require 2 1/2 leaves filler -- again depending the size of the leaf. I sometimes roll a Churchill, and it may take four leaves. Or I might cut it off short and call it robusto. Which is "standard"? Prolly corona, to tell the truth. Prolly all are skinny midgets compared to what cigar stores like to sell.

There's prolly someone who goes all the way as far as weighing leaf -- but that's way too anal for me, #1, and #2, how damp is the leaf, as you remark yourself. Having seen those kits several times, I'm thinking you must be rolling way bigger gars than I do, if you run out of leaf before you roll 20. But then, I have never rolled up a kit -- all I've done is give kits away.

My recommendation would be to pull out a store bought stick you like the size of, feel it in your hand, then grab enough filler & binder leaf to where it feels about the same, & go from there. No matter what vid you watch of what commercial or amateur roller, none of them are doing it any other way than by feel. So if you have a bunch that feels right and is about two parts this, one part that, and one part the other, then go with it. You won't roll today as well as you will roll tomorrow, but then you won't roll tomorrow as well as you want to roll eventually, some day, so what the heck, right? Enjoy the process, don't stress, enjoy your smoke, and do another.

Once having hit a kit or two to discover whether you enjoy rolling and like the result, you are prolly better off now to buy by the pound. You can easily fill up a box of gars with two pounds of leaf. I just now filled a box of 24 coronas, two parts Vuelta Abajo seco, Dom Olor binder, Criollo 98 wrapper. For this project I opened a new pound of Vuelta and a new pound of Dom Olor binder. I have half the pound of Vuelta left over, way more than half the Olor, and prolly two third the wrapper left over. So it doesn't take much, so long as you don't waste much.

Hey, welcome to the obsession
 

ras_oscar

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Unlike many, I don't do the Entubado method, I use the book method. Grab 3 leaves, tips aligned and pointed toward the binder leaf on the edge of the board. Ligero on top, visio in the middle, seco on the bottom. Seco with a fairly uniform and untorn section toward the tip. I trim off the tip and flip it to stack the cut edges forming a flat foot. Trim off the head to form a bunch of the proper length, and cut the head scrap into strips 3/4" wide to firm up the head and forming a flat head. then I put my hand on the stack and get to feel where its over filled and under filled. Sometimes I move stuff around. Sometimes I add, sometimes I take away. Then I roll it up into a loose bunch, using the seco as a prebinder. I get to feel it again, and occasionally readjust. Once I'm happy I move the rolled bunch over to the binder and roll it up. Twist the head and pop it into the mold.
 

Dominican56

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Unlike many, I don't do the Entubado method, I use the book method. Grab 3 leaves, tips aligned and pointed toward the binder leaf on the edge of the board. Ligero on top, visio in the middle, seco on the bottom. Seco with a fairly uniform and untorn section toward the tip. I trim off the tip and flip it to stack the cut edges forming a flat foot. Trim off the head to form a bunch of the proper length, and cut the head scrap into strips 3/4" wide to firm up the head and forming a flat head. then I put my hand on the stack and get to feel where its over filled and under filled. Sometimes I move stuff around. Sometimes I add, sometimes I take away. Then I roll it up into a loose bunch, using the seco as a prebinder. I get to feel it again, and occasionally readjust. Once I'm happy I move the rolled bunch over to the binder and roll it up. Twist the head and pop it into the mold.

That's pretty much how I've been rolling lately. So far the burn is good, draw is good. I'm happy with it. I've taken apart more than a few commercial cigars and noticed there is no real pattern to how they put leaf in the cigar. Sometimes they are aligned with the tips going one direction then others it's not that way. So, I'm not particular with that either.

I lay the leaf as you described, from board up: seco, viso (2 kinds sometimes) ligero. I cut the stack to size (marks on my cutting board) then stuff the ends back into the bunch. I roll as you said with the seco as a pre-binder. Sometimes I lay an extra seco between the viso and ligero if I'm using extra and so far no burn issues whatsoever.

It's a faster bunching method for me rather than rolling tubes. I find I can make a more uniform cigar this way, too.
 

Smokin Harley

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[FONT=arial, sans-serif]Hi all! I'm new to the group and figured I'd get some expert advice on the proper leaf filler proportions. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, sans-serif]I've ordered a few whole leaf blends from WLT, and recently rolled the [/FONT]Azucarado Oscuro II blend. The finished product was great, but I was a little confused with the proper recipe for the blend. On the package it indicated 2 parts:1 part:1 part to make 18-20 cigars. I took that to mean that I should blend 2 whole Seco leaves with 1 Flojo Viso leaf and 1 Ligero leaf[FONT=arial, sans-serif]. The cigars that were produced that way were excellent, but there was not enough tobacco to make 18-20 cigars. I ended up making only 13 "standard sized" cigars with this ratio as there wasn't enough Flojo Viso or Ligero to make 18 that way, while there was plenty of left over Seco. Don at WLT wasn't very helpful and just referred me to this group. My question is, for a standard rolled cigar with a 2:1:1 ratio, do you roll 4 whole leaves to make 1 cigar, or do you lay out the filler contents and divide them up 20 ways to that you get 20 cigars, or is there a better way yo do this? I'm just a home roller, so weighing out 2:1:1 isn't possible for each cigar. Also, I would think that weight would be somewhat inaccurate if the filler leaves were in various states of hydration. Help me out...



[/FONT]

If you separate the different leaf into individual piles ,weigh it and do your proportions that way . Instead of saying 1 leaf to 2 leaves, etc. Might want to go weight for weight as leaves vary in size for different varieties. It is possible. find a small digital postal scale , measures out to 100ths of an ounce ,as we say,
close enough for government work.
 

Smokin Harley

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That's pretty much how I've been rolling lately. So far the burn is good, draw is good. I'm happy with it. I've taken apart more than a few commercial cigars and noticed there is no real pattern to how they put leaf in the cigar. Sometimes they are aligned with the tips going one direction then others it's not that way. So, I'm not particular with that either.

I lay the leaf as you described, from board up: seco, viso (2 kinds sometimes) ligero. I cut the stack to size (marks on my cutting board) then stuff the ends back into the bunch. I roll as you said with the seco as a pre-binder. Sometimes I lay an extra seco between the viso and ligero if I'm using extra and so far no burn issues whatsoever.

It's a faster bunching method for me rather than rolling tubes. I find I can make a more uniform cigar this way, too.

rolling tubes shouldnt be a precise method or step. I take a leaf and loosely fold it lengthwise over itself 2 or 3 times, holding it in my off hands last 2 or 3 fingers while tubing another leaf and so on .some leaves are wider than other so I may split those in half before tubing them, distributing that leaf variety more throughout the bunch.
 

ras_oscar

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I understand that Entubado is the traditional Cuban method. I have done it a couple times. The challenge I face is many of the leaves I have in my inventory are not complete frogs. Leaves are torn, pieces' missing, or fragments of leaf. I suspect a factory would most likely discard a lot of the leaf I roll with, since they're about volume production, and roller's labor is the most expensive element in the equation. The book method allows me to gather a volume of a particular leaf into a pile and make a serviceable cigar. So long as I can get a whole leaf on the bottom to act as a pre-binder, its all good. I have never seen a video of what I do anywhere, it's just what works for me.
 

ras_oscar

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As I progress further in the world of rolling, I have taken to observing my commercial sticks just after I light them and before an ash has begun to form. Particularly in the evening, as light begins to fade, I can clearly see how the bunch was put together. None of them I have seen appear to be tubes.
 

deluxestogie

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I've probably mentioned this before, but as a cigar smoker for about a half-century, I never heard the term, "entubado" until quite recently. I believe it to be a newly invented marketing term (not exactly shocking, in the world of cigar marketing fluff). If you view the fairly numerous videos of accomplished Cuban torcedors, it's just not there.

Bob
 

Dominican56

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Can't say how long the rolling method has been around, but I've deconstructed a couple of H. Upmann (cuban) that were too wet to smoke. Both were rolled using the tube method. My guess is that many other sticks are machine bunched and hand wrapped. Can't prove that, but from the ones I've taken apart I'd say that's how they were bunched.
 

waikikigun

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I've dissected many Cuban brands during the last 3 years. 100% were composed of tubes.

Cohiba, H. Upmann, Montecristo, Partagas, RyJ, Bolivar, Trinidad, and Hoyo.
 

DistillingJim

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It would be interesting to see a dissection of some older cigars to see if this is a more recent development or not
 
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