How many tight-draw cigars have you saved?

[CigarStone]

Steve @Eqwhipped and I had this discussion last week and I'm curious what the general consensus is?

I think we can all admit that the Perfecdraw is one of the best tools out there and even though I have two, and consider them good purchases, I find it very rare to truly save a good cigar which has a tight draw. But as Steve put it, if you save a $30-$40 cigar occasionally it's worth it.

I'm curious what percentage of the "attempts" that you make to save a tight drawing cigar are actually successful?

 

[Eqwhipped]

Out of 10...
3 become restored to normal
2 are "smokable" (tight draw)
5 are damaged, tunnel or can't be unblocked.

Additionally, what technique do you use?
Do you go from foot to head, head to foot or both?

Two pokes at different angles is my go too, usually from head to foot. (Entering from the end you cut)

 

[hydro-terp]

Two pokes at different angles is my go too, usually from head to foot. (Entering from the end you cut)

This thread is instantly headed to the ditch...

HT

 

[dawgie]

I would say that a conservative guess would be around 1%. But for me, it’s not just about the money saved. It’s also about the personal satisfaction of “saving” a stick that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to finish. (I spent my career as a Service Tech and still love to “fix” things.)

 

[BlindedByScience]

Out of 10...
3 become restored to normal
2 are "smokable" (tight draw)
5 are damaged, tunnel or can't be unblocked.

Additionally, what technique do you use?
Do you go from foot to head, head to foot or both?

Two pokes at different angles is my go too, usually from head to foot. (Entering from the end you cut)

Interesting question. My 'guesstimate' is a little different;

Out of 10...
2 become restored to normal
5 are "smokable" (tight draw)
3 are damaged, tunnel or can't be unblocked.

Biggest failure I've seen is with a tight, sometimes overfilled stick, you get wrapper damage. Even with the great PerfecDraw tool, they'll all to often 'blow up' when you jam your rod in there (...sorry, couldn't resist.... ). I've tried to glue the wrapper back together but it's usually a futile gesture at that point.

Head to foot while twisting, straight pull out. Test the draw, repeat as necessary. Given the amount of wrappers I've seen go away, I usually go dead center down the stick, and if I can get it opened up a little, I consider that a win. Haven't seen a huge tunneling problem with that method, which is a little surprising.

I also found nice a nice tiny straight awl on Amazon I keep by my two smoking locations. Often the head will get plugged and a gentle awl job will open them up and allow much better draws.

....wish I could say I haven't been cracking up while reading / typing my reply, but guilty as charged here....

 

[jfields]

I refuse to!

 

[CigarStone]

Interesting question. My 'guesstimate' is a little different;

Out of 10...
2 become restored to normal
5 are "smokable" (tight draw)
3 are damaged, tunnel or can't be unblocked.

Biggest failure I've seen is with a tight, sometimes overfilled stick, you get wrapper damage. Even with the great PerfecDraw tool, they'll all to often 'blow up' when you jam your rod in there (...sorry, couldn't resist.... ). I've tried to glue the wrapper back together but it's usually a futile gesture at that point.

Head to foot while twisting, straight pull out. Test the draw, repeat as necessary. Given the amount of wrappers I've seen go away, I usually go dead center down the stick, and if I can get it opened up a little, I consider that a win. Haven't seen a huge tunneling problem with that method, which is a little surprising.

I also found nice a nice tiny straight awl on Amazon I keep by my two smoking locations. Often the head will get plugged and a gentle awl job will open them up and allow much better draws.

....wish I could say I haven't been cracking up while reading / typing my reply, but guilty as charged here....

I would say I have truly restored one out of 10 to perfect condition. I have noticed that once you pull some of the guts out the cigar becomes mushy and still is not a perfect draw.

I typically gently massage it looking for a hard spot (in keeping with Tom's theme) @BlindedByScience and then try to extract some tobacco from that spot.

 

[CigarStone]

I refuse to!

Then why do you have that beautiful, Ivory handled, custom-made perfecdraw set?

 

[George Scott]

TL;DR The Perfecdraw is an excellent tool that every serious cigar smoker should have. Even if it can only rescue 1 out of 10 cigars, it's worth it.

In my experience the Perfecdraw does a great job of breaking up "knots". The type of cigar that is fine except for one little spot that is a hard knot that is plugging the draw. It usually happens at or near the head, but I've had them all the way down into the middle.

If the cigar is over filled then the draw is going to be tight no matter what and all a tool is going to do is "drill" a whole down the middle, and in my opinion and experience, it will never have a proper draw.

I've had some success with 'adjusting' a decent cigar that had a slightly tighter draw than I prefer by smoking about an inch BEFORE using the Perfecdraw. The cigar might open up on its own but if not, it's now more pliable inside, so the Perfecdraw will work better at pulling out tobacco instead of just drilling a dry hole in it. You've got to try this to experience what I'm trying to describe.

Depending on conditions, sometimes running the Perfecdraw down into a cigar will pop a delicate wrapper, it happens. I have had 100% success with patching these occurrences with Rod's PerfecRepair. It works great for any sort of wrapper repair.

YMMV of course!

 

[CigarStone]

TL;DR The Perfecdraw is an excellent tool that every serious cigar smoker should have. Even if it can only rescue 1 out of 10 cigars, it's worth it.

In my experience the Perfecdraw does a great job of breaking up "knots". The type of cigar that is fine except for one little spot that is a hard knot that is plugging the draw. It usually happens at or near the head, but I've had them all the way down into the middle.

If the cigar is over filled then the draw is going to be tight no matter what and all a tool is going to do is "drill" a whole down the middle, and in my opinion and experience, it will never have a proper draw.

I've had some success with 'adjusting' a decent cigar that had a slightly tighter draw than I prefer by smoking about an inch BEFORE using the Perfecdraw. The cigar might open up on its own but if not, it's now more pliable inside, so the Perfecdraw will work better at pulling out tobacco instead of just drilling a dry hole in it. You've got to try this to experience what I'm trying to describe.

Depending on conditions, sometimes running the Perfecdraw down into a cigar will pop a delicate wrapper, it happens. I have had 100% success with patching these occurrences with Rod's PerfecRepair. It works great for any sort of wrapper repair.

YMMV of course!

Talk about TL,DR!

Pot meet kettle.

 

[George Scott]

Talk about TL,DR!

Pot meet kettle.

AH! @CigarStone My TL;DR was meant for my own long message, not about anyone else’s. I thought that was the correct way to use it. I prefixed my short response with the TL;DR, then presented my long response afterwords. Did I do that wrong? I've been told I'm prone to poor communications sometimes!

 

[CigarStone]

AH! @CigarStone My TL;DR was meant for my own long message, not about anyone else’s. I thought that was the correct way to use it. I prefixed my short response with the TL;DR, then presented my long response afterwords. Did I do that wrong? I've been told I'm prone to poor communications sometimes!

I'm thoroughly confused but that's nothing unusual.