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

[mooster]

I assure you the texture has little to do with how it burns...

The texture has everything to do with how it burns.

[Basment_Shaman]

The texture has everything to do with how it burns.

I only been smoking for 45 years,and remain open minded. Sure if you stuff a flake like Samuel Gawith in a bowl whole it will require many relights. but fully rubbed out or shredded in my herb grinder they burn and taste the same. I see your point on texture in comparison to different tobacco cuts like shag. ribbon, broken flake etc. But in this case I stand firm. Contempt prior to investigation.

[El Whedo]

Humm...

I haven't smoked a pipe for 45 years, but I do have a firm grasp of physics.

I not convinced of your claims, but do feel the need for an experiment.

I will set up an experiment when I get home if not too tired tonight, if not tonight I will do it tomorrow morning.

Something along the lines of two samples cut from the same St. James Flake weighed on a triple beam scale, then one rubbed out, and the other run through a herb grinder. I will smoke both (small) samples back to back (in the same small pipe)while using a stop watch to time each. I will take notes on burn rate, how hot it burns, tongue burn, flavor, etc.

Stand back! I'm gonna try Science!

[mooster]

Oops; ended up with two posts somehow.

[mooster]

I only been smoking for 45 years,and remain open minded. Sure if you stuff a flake like Samuel Gawith in a bowl whole it will require many relights. but fully rubbed out or shredded in my herb grinder they burn and taste the same. I see your point on texture in comparison to different tobacco cuts like shag. ribbon, broken flake etc. But in this case I stand firm. Contempt prior to investigation.

Okay, let me get this straight: you agree that the different cuts cause differences in burning, but if tobacco is broken up in your magic grinder, these differences disappear?

[BryGuySC]

Humm...

I haven't smoked a pipe for 45 years, but I do have a firm grasp of physics.

I not convinced of your claims, but do feel the need for an experiment.

I will set up an experiment when I get home if not too tired tonight, if not tonight I will do it tomorrow morning.

Something along the lines of two samples cut from the same St. James Flake weighed on a triple beam scale, then one rubbed out, and the other run through a herb grinder. I will smoke both (small) samples back to back (in the same small pipe)while using a stop watch to time each. I will take notes on burn rate, how hot it burns, tongue burn, flavor, etc.

Stand back! I'm gonna try Science!

[Emperor Zurg]

Okay, let me get this straight: you agree that the different cuts cause differences in burning, but if tobacco is broken up in your magic grinder, these differences disappear?

I think the only thing he meant to say was that the magical grinder produces an end result basically equivalent to rubbed out flake.
I don't think any veteran pipe smoker would make such a ridiculous assertion as 'different cuts all burn the same'

[El Whedo]

I cut identically sized triangles of St. James flake this morning, and got out the triple-beam to weigh them. My triple beam weighs to the gram, not the tenth of a gram like I thought.

Weighing flake tobacco to the gram isn't accurate enough by a order of magnitude for this experiment... but I got the problem solved! I called up a retired priest friend of mine down in Taos who used to be a chemistry teacher. He tells me he has a cabineted balance scale that is accurate to the hundredth of a gram! Yee-Haww!!! Two orders of magnitude will solve this problem.

The experiment is gonna be expanded to both me and Father Joe as smoking subjects, and he suggested we smoke the two small bowls a few different times throughout the day. He also suggested I bring a bottle of brandy.

The newly expanded experiment will go forward as soon as I have a day off... probably early next week when the managers get back. Until then, I'm working every day.

[Rocket Scientologist]

I cut identically sized triangles of St. James flake this morning, and got out the triple-beam to weigh them. My triple beam weighs to the gram, not the tenth of a gram like I thought.

Weighing flake tobacco to the gram isn't accurate enough by a order of magnitude for this experiment... but I got the problem solved! I called up a retired priest friend of mine down in Taos who used to be a chemistry teacher. He tells me he has a cabineted balance scale that is accurate to the hundredth of a gram! Yee-Haww!!! Two orders of magnitude will solve this problem.

The experiment is gonna be expanded to both me and Father Joe as smoking subjects, and he suggested we smoke the two small bowls a few different times throughout the day. He also suggested I bring a bottle of brandy.

The newly expanded experiment will go forward as soon as I have a day off... probably early next week when the managers get back. Until then, I'm working every day.

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

[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.