Bands On / Bands Off?

Pretty simple. Do you remove the band from your cigar before you smoke it, or leave it on until the burn requires you remove it?

The urban myth as to the history of the band goes something like this. Back in the Victorian era, both men and women smoked cigars. At the time, current fashion was that women wore long white gloves. Holding a warm cigar would cause the gloves to be discolored and the stains wouldn't come out. Bands were either added, or modified to be larger, so the woman could have enough room in order to hold the cigar and not stain her gloves. The rule of thumb was that women left the band on, but men should take it off.

That always begs the argument that it's nothing, but straight marketing.

Another position has traditionally been that to avoid damaging the cigar, one should wait until the burn ring is close enough to the band to warm the glue. Sounds good in theory, but having tried this hundreds of times, it doesn't work. The glue is simply too tenacious.

As a general rule, I prefer to remove the band as part of my pre-light ritual. I remove the band first, toast, cut, light.

I tend to leave the bands on. I do this for two reasons, first is I think it gives me a nice base line for how far into the cigar I am. Second is I think bands look cool and tend to look at them in closer detail as I'm smoking my cigar. If I take the band off ahead of time I tend to not really look at it again, which to me is a waste of sometimes good artwork or graphic design.

I like to show what I'm smoking and see what others are smoking. At minimum its a conversation starter. I tend to hold the cigar by the band as well. I wear white gloves pretty much every where I go.

Seeing as how I age most of my stuff the band usually just slides right off. (The cigar usually becomes a tiny bit smaller when aged) If it doesn't slide off I will wait until it comes off easily. One exception to this is when I am doing a review. I think the band adds a bit of "pop" to the images.

The only downside to removing the band is that my dry cleaner charges extra to get the stains out of my white gloves.:p

Stay tuned for a Gloves On/Off poll...

Remove. Started out smoking with them on, until one evening at an outside bar in Tampa. I had enjoyed many a local brew, when I was offered a cigar. Paying no attention, I fired it up, and went about drinking and yakin, until I encountered a horrible burnt taste. It was the band burning, and a really thick metallic one at that. Since then, I make sure to remove them just after examining the cigar.

I generally wait until the burn line gets 1/4-3/8" away from the band then remove. That way if I somehow damage the wrapper I've enjoyed a significant portion of the cigar carefree.

Like most others, I also wear white gloves. Bands on.

I tend to leave them on until I get about mid way through the cigar. There's no real reason why I leave them on though, as I stopped wearing white gloves back in the 80s.

I do recommend everyone always remove the band from the foot of cigars that have them before lighting. Just a friendly tip.

I only wear one glove, ala Michael Jackson, but it happens to be on my smoking hand, so I leave them on.