How To Fold and Stuff Flakes: Don't Bother (Yet)

[El Whedo]

A retired priest/chemistry teacher who wants to participate in a smoking experiment...and drink brandy. He sounds AWESOME.

Yep. Father Joe is a great human being. The last time I hung out with him we downed a couple bottles of wine then sent a drum circle of hippies over to the lawn in front of the Catholic church to better hear the Taos Hum because, "several Ley lines cross there". Lol.

Anyhoo... I tried running a bit of fresh-from-the-jar St James flake through a Space Case grinder. It wadded up into little dense balls and was just about unsmokeable. I let some St James flake sit out for a good 20 minutes and ran it through the grinder and ended up with something much like I get when I rub out a flake by hand. After two hours of drying and being put through the grinder it was WAY too ground up and "fluffy". That bowl burned like gunpowder. So the same number of turns with different dryness of the same tobacco made for a WIDE difference in burning characteristics.

So I see more problems with the experiment. Namely, the dryness of the tobacco.

At this point I'm still willing to do an experiment, mostly because I wanna drink brandy with Father Joe, but my guess is that it will be WAY less effort to get a flake rubbed out by hand to my specs, rather than by a grinder, and I've already seen first hand that the grind did, in fact, change the burn.

[Mister Moo]

Yep. Father Joe is a great human being. The last time I hung out with him we downed a couple bottles of wine then sent a drum circle of hippies over to the lawn in front of the Catholic church to better hear the Taos Hum because, "several Ley lines cross there". Lol.

Anyhoo... I tried running a bit of fresh-from-the-jar St James flake through a Space Case grinder. It wadded up into little dense balls and was just about unsmokeable. I let some St James flake sit out for a good 20 minutes and ran it through the grinder and ended up with something much like I get when I rub out a flake by hand. After two hours of drying and being put through the grinder it was WAY too ground up and "fluffy". That bowl burned like gunpowder. So the same number of turns with different dryness of the same tobacco made for a WIDE difference in burning characteristics.

So I see more problems with the experiment. Namely, the dryness of the tobacco.

At this point I'm still willing to do an experiment, mostly because I wanna drink brandy with Father Joe, but my guess is that it will be WAY less effort to get a flake rubbed out by hand to my specs, rather than by a grinder, and I've already seen first hand that the grind did, in fact, change the burn.

Anything for science