How do you smoke your "flake" tobacco? & How d

[SlowToke]

I've always rubbed them out thoroughly with the exception of McClelland's Dark Star which I cube cut.

[JimVH]

Do we think all tobacco expands or just flakes that are left mostly intact?

I say all tobacco. Even shags swell when I light them.

[UncleBob]

Do we think all tobacco expands or just flakes that are left mostly intact?

I say all tobacco. Even shags swell when I light them.

Yep

[FredS]

I agree. You can often see the top strands blooming up to the heat at first light.

One wonders why flakes seem to give us more problems when they expand? When I first smoked flakes I went with the common wisdom of cutting them in half and placed them vertically in the smallish bowl. You have to use a small chambered pipe for flakes, right? Anyway, after maybe 5 minutes they swelled so much I could barely draw air. I even had difficulty digging them out. It was like a brick. That day I swore off smoking flakes in flake form. I rubbed them out from then on until I tried Das' twist method, with a bundle well under the diameter of the tobacco chamber.

[DepartedLight]

Do we think all tobacco expands or just flakes that are left mostly intact?

I say all tobacco. Even shags swell when I light them.

Yep

Science is still in effect in all brands of pipes and pipe tobacco.

[Cleon]

Thanks for this thread. I can't believe I've never thought of or heard of cube cutting a flake. You'd think after all these years I would have tried it. Duh. I feel a little dumb.

So, I'm going to try this with some Ennerdale Flake and see what happens.