Shredding whole leaf tobacco

Update: I am becoming much more efficient at stripping the stems from the leaves; I guess it comes with practice. I did a 1/4 pound of Virginia the other day in less than 15 minutes. The orientals, with the small leaves will continue to be troublesome, just by the sheer numbers of leaves. Even with them I have come up with ways to speed up the process. I've seen stem-stripping tools available... anyone ever tried one of them?

Also thinking about applying a small amount of lakeland-type toppings if I can find a source for them, particularly the tonquin bean top dressing. Don't much care for the grandma's perfumey stuff though.

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Originally Posted by Haebar

Also thinking about applying a small amount of lakeland-type toppings if I can find a source for them, particularly the tonquin bean top dressing...

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LMGTFY

This is a pound of flue-cured Virginia scraps after cleaning. I bought a sampling of the bags of scraps just to see if they would be useful for making pipe tobacco. When I took them out of the shipping box, I immediately regretted having bought them in spite of the low price. However, after working this batch up, they were not as bad as I thought they would be. Lots of stems and a few discolored pieces, but in the end, I am pleased with the yield.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...psqaespmaw.jpg

Update: The bag of American Virginia flue-cured scraps were completely unusable; I'll use them in the garden somehow. However, the Assorted Virginia flue-cured scraps were about 80% usable for pipe tobacco and the Fronto scraps were about 90% usable. Even so, I won't buy anymore of the scraps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Haebar

This is a pound of flue-cured Virginia scraps after cleaning. I bought a sampling of the bags of scraps just to see if they would be useful for making pipe tobacco. When I took them out of the shipping box, I immediately regretted having bought them in spite of the low price. However, after working this batch up, they were not as bad as I thought they would be. Lots of stems and a few discolored pieces, but in the end, I am pleased with the yield.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...psqaespmaw.jpg

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Is that your tobacco salad bowl? :)

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Originally Posted by Bruck

Is that your tobacco salad bowl? :)

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Yessir, it's a huge stainless steel bowl. It's good for blending too. You can swirl it around and if you shake it a certain way, you can make the tobacco fines and dust come to one end where you can spoon it out.

I have "processed" so much whole leaf tobacco today that my right hand is sore from cranking the hand-shredder. I had to switch to turning the handle with my left hand. If the tobacco has a certain amount of moisture in the leaf that it gums up the shredder and I have to stop and clean out the grooves with a knife. They must have a bad year for American flue-cured Virginia because it was in bad shape. I got some Canadian flue-cured and it was in fine shape.

Started working on a pound of 1997 Latakia from Whole Leaf Tobacco this morning. It is tedious work removing the stems from these tiny leaves. The box in the upper left is the raw leaf, the bottom left box are some of the stems removed and the tobacco in the pan on the right is what has been de-stemmed. I had to take a break after almost three hours of working on it.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...pswn5308im.jpg

Here's a picture of the shredding process. This is some Virginia Gold Fronto leaf, very good condition leaves that I got from Whole Leaf Tobacco.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...pshqwk0nwk.jpg

I also bought a kit for making Balkan Sobranidje tobacco. The assumption is that you will use it for making cigarettes, so they included two different casings to be used on two of the three different types of leaves.

Looking forward to the results - you'll have to let us know how the blending goes.

BTW, re Virginias - I get pretty much all mine from Larry the Tobacco Butcher. BTW, his website's out of date; he's got a lot more stuff that what's there. PM me for details if you're interested.

The biggest challenge of all was processing the Latakia! Destemming a pound of it took about 3-4 hours. Then I cut it up with an ulu on a cutting board; I had tried shredding it with my shredder, but the end product was too fine.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps16buxgwa.jpg