Partagas Garnatomy
webmost
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ShawnOL sent me 16 Partagas from an ISOM which are WAY too tight to smoke. Wanted to know if I could rewrap them into a more flammable config. I thought some of you might want to see the anatomy of these gars.
They're 5" coronas about 46rg. They may not be quite hard enough to drive nails; but they are most certainly hard enough to use as treenails. 
Just look at the foot of one, & tell me that's not tight:
Looks as tho they were intended to be the same size as all these antique cigar molds use to make, before regulation drove all the jobs overseas. The corona was the natural size of a gar up until the customer began to say "If I am going to pay eight, ten, twelve bucks a stick, then I am going to demand more baccy in it," at which point big mandingo jawbreakers took over the industry.
Above you see the corona almost fit into its slot, whereas below you see it fit comfortably in the slot when turned ninety degrees:
This is because the gar was box pressed on only one dimension, producing a somewhat lozenge shaped cross section:
Which is perhaps even better demonstrated by examining the band:
Box pressing is no doubt a part of the problem here. They filled a shape, and then they squished it.
Now let's examine the wrapper. Handiest way to do this is first to circumcise the wrapper with a knife. That isolated the upper bit of wrapper which was glued down, so as to free the rest to unwrap:
I would bet a fat man and his donut that this is CT shade, just judging from its diaphanous delication. Look here, where you can just about make out the black knife right thru this leaf, it's so thin:
OTOH, I would not doubt that CT shade may be sanctioned, cause we know that if we refuse to sell gar leafs to Castro he will fall. Soon. Any day now. And therefore, it is prolly some CT shade seed grown south of Miami. Perhaps in Ecuador.
The bunch beneath seems crude. Look at its rough exterior:
Not a sign of good workmanship. Look at this bunch in the mold, for comparo:
Another thing I notice is that there is only the one mold mark down the side. Ordinarily, you would rotate the bunch 90 degrees then clamp the mold back down, to reduce seams. So you should see two muted mold marks.
The other thing is, it's double-bound. Note thetwo layers of binder.
For such a small stick to be double bound... I would have to assume that variety of leaf used for binder, the blender wanted to have two layers of his fave yummy leaf right beneath the wrap. So it would be good to re-use both these layers, rather than re-bind with something else. I'm guessing these are a habano leaf. Dunno what priming.
So here's your three components, wrapper, binder, & filler:
That gut pile is still harder than a duck's beak, even without the double binders. So let's pry that apart & see why it's so tight:
... and this is a job for some thumbnails, I tell you that. Tighter than Sister Mary Mother of Sorrows on Easter night. Note the two conical plugs. These were stuck in from either end. Note the slightly twisted seam. Note that everything was rolled at one whack. Home rollers commonly extoll the "entubado" method. That method would roll each leaf into its own tube, and then bind all these tubes together. That method give you that many more tubes (hence entubado) for the air to flow thru. The method used here was to simply lay all the leaves together, insert the tapered plugs, and roll tight. No, not that tight... tighter than that tight. I said tight, dammit. That's prolly another reason it's so tight. The twist doesn't help either.
Next step, I will put a bit of CT shade wrapper in the conditioning chamber, I'll loosen up the filler best I can, I'll try making tubes out of it, then see if I can re-use the same binder. I'll prolly lose a bit of length. I might not be able to fit the result into the same mold. But you never know. I'll certainly make sure not to squish it.
We'll see.
Comments
^^^wow. Looks like an “Avoid these mistakes” tutorial. Please continue, Professor 🥸
This is kinda what I was kicking around last year. Not to make them smokable but to perhaps throw a Cameroon binder in there or add a San andres wrapper. Interesting post
We haven't seen that level of dissection since @danielzreyes used to do in-depth exams of flawed cigars. In fact, I think you may have outdone him.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
I remember him dissecting a Davidoff one time. Needed the WTF button back then
Super interesting.... I can’t wait to see what it will look like and how it would perform entubado....
Very enjoyable read and informative 👍. Cigar science! Let us know how it works out.
I have gotten Cubans like this in the past, you would be amazed at what 5 years will do. A few months old, the two I tried were unsmokeable, five years later, perfect draw.
MOW badge received.
Can't wait till the next episode of "Cigar CSI"
Well done.
Hopefully you'll be able to get some enjoyment out of them. They were pretty useless as is.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
No kiddin?
Maybe I'll try the old microwave trick on one, see if that helps.
That would be easy, if it works...
Very interesting deconstruction.
Do you know how old the cigars are?
I know, You're a big dog and I'm on the list.
Let's eat, GrandMa. / Let's eat GrandMa. -- Punctuation saves lives
It'll be fine once the swelling goes down.
They were bought last year sometime.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
Labeled 9-4-20
Well, hell. This is ridic. That five years comment got me to thinking, so...
I punched the end of one:
Then nuked it for twelve secs:
... and immediately blew thru the punch & out the foot. The idea is not to cook the thing, but just to free any water molecules enough to get them out the door.
It didn't blow easy; but it sure draws well enough now to smoke. That'sd odd right there. You'd expect it to flow equally both ways. I wouldn't say it's free-flowing or anything. But you can put up with the draw without sucking your adenoids out or inverting your eardrums or anything.
Maybe it's just this one. I'll fire this during super bowl and try another one if it works out. Easy street is my favorite street.
Very interesting. It's common practice to microwave pipe tobacco that's been packaged too moist to smoke well for about 15 seconds of you don't have the time to set it out to dry for 30 minutes or more.
The dynamics may be different with a cigar, the water molecules will vibrate in the microwave which may help with tight construction, though I've never known the microwave to tenderize meat, it usually ends up denser.
This is very cool, now I don’t have to bury stuff for as long. Thank you sir.
MOW badge received.
when you blow it is your lungs doing the work, when you suck it is your mouth doing the work and it is much stronger.
@webmost any update on the nuked stick? How'd it fare?
Yeah I will say the recent acquired CC's I have gotten have been on the tighter side but like patrick said, I let them rest for awhile and they get to where they are supposed to be. Is it that they might be too wet and still need to shed some moisture to "shrink" a bit to loosen up?
"I've got a great cigar collection - it's actually not a collection, because that would imply I wasn't going to smoke ever last one of 'em." - Ron White
Could be. Perhaps they just don't take the time to age them.
From what I have read or talked with people about, it comes down to the demand over the last 10ish years has taken a toll on how long they can actually age their cigars. With the internet and worldwide shipping the demand for ISOM's has skyrocketed and they just dont have the time/space/resources to let them age like they used to.
"I've got a great cigar collection - it's actually not a collection, because that would imply I wasn't going to smoke ever last one of 'em." - Ron White
Have not burnt it yet. Here's the rough gar which resulted:
Here's how I arrived at this:
Each leaf layer unpeeled looked like so:
You can see that leaf has a stem down the midst. Not a stem fan. So I de-stemmed them like so:
The odd bits from cone plugs were incorporated into various tubes
Each de-stemmed pair was then rolled into a loose tube:
These tubes were gathered together like so:
The gather was bound in the old binder like so:
... which was not a good idea as the old binder left a grumbly surface
Here's the bound bunch in the mold:
Wrapper went in the conditioning chamber:
Turn the doll in the mold an hour later so's the mold mark gets diminished. Wrap it up. There you are.
I'll hit it soon's either weather permits or we get a fire on the hearth.
Any updates about how this performed?
Oh... sorry, I spaced out...
Drew well, burnt well, tasted the same. Essentially, all I did to reduce tightness was remove the stems. All I did to enhance flow was tube the plugged leaves. Still have a double handful of 'em untouched in the box, waiting for my tuit to get round.
Haven't done much gar rolling here as I've been experimenting with pipes. It's all jsnake's fault.
I bet they'd be decent with a CT shade wrapper.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.