Pressing your own homemade flakes.

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sonpuff

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I love smoking whole flakes and coins and have thought about the possibility of making some myself, and was wondering if anyone has actually tried this.

For small quantities I though about using my masive bench vice that is mounted to my shop workbench. I'm thinking it would create sufficient pressure to press tobacco with.

I was wondering though....in order to make the tobacco components stick or adhere to each other into a flake form, would a person slightly moisten the tobacco before putting it into the press?

I've got some straight virginias, blending perique, and latakia and thought it would be fun to kind of play around with it a bit.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Sonpuff
 
Sounds like it might work but you might want modify that bench vise to allow it to work VERTICALLY as the presses used by blenders work. Get your 'baccy together, alter your vise, and press away !! Then come back and tell us about your experience ! :twisted: :twisted:
 
I think flake tobacco is usually made by stacking sheets of leaves and then pressing them. Once they have a pressed block, the flakes are sliced off crossgrain. Then they all come off in uniform slices that hold together nicely. If you have precut tocacco, you can press it, but it will end up more like a crumble cake. It might not make nice, solid flakes or coins like you're talking about, though. It definitely will meld the flavor more quickly than blending it loosely will. I've always wanted to press some Dunhill EMP that way to see what would happen. Good luck!!
 
And as you probably know coins are made from layers of cut leaf rolled tightly and then bound for a period of time and then sliced off like sausage into coins. A press would hardly help you in that endeavor.
 
I saw this a while ago and thought it was pretty interesting. I you are thinking about trying this looks like a pretty low budget way to test it out.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W1H_9nk4glQ" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Utube has many videos of different ways people have accomplished this with little expense.

Craig
 
I came across a great article on the MacBaren website that describes in detail with photos on how MacBaren makes flake tobacco.
I was surprised to learn that they do not use whole leaf tobacco. The grind it into what appears to be regular ribbon size particles, add steam to wet it and then place it in a mold that creates what appears to be about a 3'x3'x2" size slab. They then take, I think it was 34 of these slabs and then stack them into a press that applies 55 tons of pressure for 12 hours. After 12 hours they remove the stack and place the stack on a rack and then band the stack and place weights on top of the stack and let it sit for 30 days to cure. After 30 days they then cut each slab into flakes and then hand pack them into tins for sale.
Pretty interesting.......
 
Attached is a link to Photobucket showing seven photos of my first flake pressing attempt.

I must say that so far I am very pleased with the result.

I'm glad I built this little press with take-down screws in order to aid in the removal of the flake. Otherwise it would have been a bear cat to remove the flake without damaging it. Simply removing the take-down screws makes flake removal a sinch.

Upon opening the press and removing the flake I was greeted with a heavenly aroma of pressed sweet virginia and latakia.
I noticed the pressing process did squeeze out the internal moisture bringing it to the surface of the flake leaving a noticibly sticky residue that I assume is caused by the natural sugars within the tobacco. I assume this will dry within and on top of the flake as the flake proceeds through its curing and drying process, and that this stickiness will aid as a binder for the entire flake.

The flake is quite dark with bright golden flecks of virginia shining through. I believe the flake will lighten somewhat in color as it dries out even more leaving a beautiful contrast between the jet black latakia and golden virginias. I noticed that the tobacco components seemed to bind and unite into flake form very well creating a very very dense and ridgid well formed flake that I believe will become even more dense as it dries out.

For this flake I used H&H Anniversary Kake for the virginia and Latakia in an attempt to duplicate as closely as possible my favorite flake SG Navy Flake.

SG Navy flake contains no perique, and Annie Kake is a very sweet Virginia with such a small hint of perique in it that I cannot detect the perique at all. Plus the sweetness of Annie Kake is almost overpowering by itself to my taste so I went a little heavy on the latakia to help offset and take the edge off the sweetness a little bit. So eventhough SG Navy flake only contains 15% latakia, I bumped this flake up to contain about 30% latakia to offset Annies sweetness.

Like MacBaren does, I am now going to allow the flake to rest and dry some more under light pressure for the next 30 days.
The one thing that amazes me the most is the amount of tobacco needed to press this flake. The press chamber measures 1-1/2" wide, 4" long, and 1/2" deep. When loading the press, I dumped quite a pile of Annie out onto a piece of copy paper and then roughly poured out a pile of Latakia next to the Annie that appeared to be 1/3 the amout of the Annie. I then hand mixed the two together. Upon viewing the blended pile of tobacco, my thought was that there is no way I'm going to get all of this into the mold. But to my surprise I kept stuffing and hand pressing the mixed tobacco into the press with my fingers making sure that all corners and the bottom were equally dense with packed tobacco, and to my surprise I was able to stuff the entire pile into the press and level with the top of the chamber. I then inserted the plunger block, which had a tight fit anyway and then hand pressed the plunger block into place before moving the press to my bench vice.

I'm estimating that I was able to pack the equivelent of 6 to 8 medium sized bowls of tobacco into the press chamber. Which means that a lot of tobacco goes into the pressing of one single flake. I'm wondering if this fact may have something to do with the difference in smoking experience with a flake vs hand-packed loose cut tobacco. There is a lot of flavor packed into one single flake.

I can't wait for the 30 days to end so I can give this flake the ultimate test.


https://s1285.photobucket.com/user/harkbucket/slideshow/Flake%20Make


Sonpuff
 
Awesome idea and nice build on the press insert. Sorry if i missed it, but how long did you leave the baccy in the press? What are you doing for the 30 days of pressure? Also, what was the ambient temp of the area in which you pressed the flake?

 
d4klutz":z8vks3au said:
Awesome idea and nice build on the press insert.  Sorry if i missed it, but how long did you leave the baccy in the press?  What are you doing for the 30 days of pressure?  Also, what was the ambient temp of the area in which you pressed the flake?
Click to expand...
I left the baccy in the press for 4 days. However, why 4 days...I don't know. I just pulled 4 days out of my hat and it seemed to work very well.
The MacBaren site says they leave their baccy under 55 tons of pressure for 12 hours. Could be I felt that since I'm not working with 55 tons...the longer the better.
For the 30 days of pressure I am just laying the flake on top of a small piece wax paper, then covering the top with wax paper and then placing about a 5 pound block of wood on top for weight. This leaves the edges of the flake exposed so it can get air to the flake and aid in the drying process during the 30 days. I figure with only the 1/8" edge of the flake being exposed and with the faces of the flake covered in wax paper, it will force the flake to slowly release it's internal moisture gradually allowing the flake to stabilize and remain flat and in its flake shape. If allowd to dry too quickly the flake could warp and crack.
After the 30 days, If I discover that the flake is in fact too dry, I will then isolate the flake in a small mason jar and re-hydrate it back to the proper moisture level with one of my homemade hydration tubes.
The ambient temperature in my basement shop is about 65 degrees.

I have discovered a cheap and handy way to make hydration tubes by simply taking a piece of paper towel, roll it up into a tight dense cylinder that measures about 1-1/2" to  2" long and about 1/4" to 1/2" in diameter. I then take a piece of duct tape and roll up the cylinder of paper towel inside the duct tape. I then take a pair of scissors and simply clip off the excess duct tape from the ends of the cylinder exposing the ends of the cylinder of paper towel. In a spray bottle, I have some distilled water in which I just put the exposed end of the paper towl against the nozzle and sqirt distilled water into the tube until the paper towel is saturated. I then dry off any excess moisture from the outside of the tube and drop this tube into my containers of tobacco. This makes great re-useable hydration tubes.  
 
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