Pipe Tobacco and Rolling Your Own - Problems with using the "wrong" kind

Factual Questions
1

Purely academic inquiry. I’m not wondering about the merits and problems of smoking, just the logistics. I think it’s pretty clear from the question that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Can pipe tobacco be rolled in rolling papers and smoked comfortably, but not inhaled? Would it produce the same aromatic smoke that a pipe does, something similar, or something completely different?

On that same vein, I’ve seen people cut open a cigar, discard the tobacco and re-roll it with… other fillings. Could the discarded tobacco be rolled in a cigarette paper or smoked in a pipe? How about refilling the cigar paper with pipe tobacco instead of… other fillings?

I guess the underlying question is, can the “wrong” kind of tobacco be used successfully with a different smoking method? Pipe tobacco in a cigarette, pipe tobacco in a cigar, etc?

2

You could conceivably smoke pipe or cigar tobacco in a rolling paper, but the question is, why on earth would you want to do that? It tastes terrible! You’d cough up a lung and it’d be thoroughly unpleasant. I’m guessing that’s why you never hear about anyone doing it.

They both would keep going out, because for one, the textures are different from cigarette tobacco. Two, neither cigar nor pipe tobacco have that wonderfully poison chemical sprayed on them that makes them burn at the same rate as the paper on a packaged filter cigarette. The same thing applies to roll-your-own tobacco. I roll my own, and I keep having to relight - on the other hand, a Marlboro/Winston/what-have-you will burn down to the filter unattended (a fire hazard if ever there was one).

So smoke a pipe, or smoke a cigar, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to try to make a cigarette out of either of them. Ugh!

actually, I wouldn’t advise anyone to smoke, period.

3

Cigarette tobacco (even the roll-your-own variety) is cut more finely and dried longer than either pipe or cigar tobacco.

4

Smoking rolled pipe tobacco is really common. I picked up the habit while I was down in Ohio. Sure it’s cheaper to buy your own machine, tobacco and tubes, but it’s not the same as smoking a normal cigarette. The smell, the cough and the time it takes to roll, makes me wonder if it’s worth saving a buck.

5

Years back i had a mate at collage who smoked “black shag pipe tobacco” in roll ups. He smoked them all day, i tried one and it was like rolling up a bike inter tube lighting it and sword swallowing a rusty hacksaw blade…But it lit and drew fine.

6

I smoked a pipe for more than 20 years, starting in college and trying every sort of tobacco I could lay hands on, from the justly-famous “original” Balkan Sobranie to Mixture #79, topped with vanilla and found at grocery counters everywhere. As I got into late middle age I quit. No point in pushing my luck any further.

You can smoke anything you like or want to try, and people do, but your natural taste, or the development of a more sophisticated palate (can I say that on Straight Dope?), tend to direct you to certain blends or types of blends, which then become your standard.

Hence, you can have someone who happily enjoys Wild Cherry Blend from Joe’s Olde London Pipe Shoppe day after day, year after year, until his briar gets a burn-through, but would turn up his nose in distaste at a legacy can of Bohemian Scandal. It isn’t just quality: I rarely smoked straight Virginias, which are regarded as the mark of the true connoisseur, but I settled naturally on a type of good quality English Mixture. I just didn’t like straight Virginias.

Joe Stalin famously had some of the best oriental tobacco in the world either available in Russia itself, from the Black Sea area, or next door countries like Turkey and Greece, yet he had the American ambassador import packets of Edgeworth, an inexpensive American blend, which Stalin loved most.

There used to be a cigar-tobacco blend put out by Balkan Sobranie, I think. It tasted like old Army socks to me (or what Army veteran friends of mine have told me old Army socks taste like), but I find cigars a bit too strong and rarely smoke one. I once found some small cigarettes made with cigar tobacco which I rather liked (I never inhale any tobacco, but enjoyed its flavor and aroma). These disappeared from the market quickly, as do most cigar tobacco blends that escape the established shape and style of a real cigar, however, I’m sure in countries where cigar tobacco is grown you would find many variants of use by the locals.

I seem to recall some pipe tobacco “cigarettes” that were on the market for a time, using a common tobacco blend (half and half?). My guess would be the reason was marketing: a more convenient form of smoking for users of that blend, but perhaps some were also cigarette smokers who wanted to take their favorite pipe blend that way.

In sum, the kinds of variants you describe seem to have a certain novelty or niche sales but lack staying power–at least that’s as far as I know: someone else might know of an exception.

In my opinion, you lose something of the refined enjoyment of pipe and cigar smoking by going outside their established forms. There is a reason we have good briar pipes, with sophisticated blends in them produced by skillful blenders like G.L. Pease, and good cigars rated variously by those “in the know.” There is, if you desire it, an acquired taste, descriptive terms, strong opinions, and a culture of the palate (sorry, but it’s descriptive) at work in pipe tobacco and cigar smoking, somewhat like coffee drinking.

I can’t find a “real” Ethiopian or Costa Rican coffee anymore, not like I could in the 1970’s, but that’s another complaint, rather like the nostalgia among pipe smokers for “old” Balkan Sobranie white label.

7

On the matter of taking the inside of cigars that are cut to hold weed and smoking that tobacco another way, it’s a bad idea. Cheap cigars that are basically sold only for the purpose of making blunts (Optimos, Phillies) use the very worst, leftover tobacco as their filling because no one actually smokes it. Any flavor to be had is in the outer leaf or shell.

8

When I was a kid, I used to make a 50-50 blend of Carter Hall Pipe Tobacco and Tops Cigarette Tobacco, roll it in a machine with a Zig-Zag paper. Burned alright, Carter gave it some sweetness, Tops gave it burnability. I never could stand a straight Tops or Bugler cigarette.
The tax around here on cigarette tobacco is much higher than pipe tobacco, many people are buying brands labled for pipes and rolling it with papers. Guess it works for them, but I like my brand name, pre-rolled Camels, so I’m not one to ask about the enjoyability of their choices. These are the same people that will smoke something that costs $1 a pack compared to Camel or Marlboro at $5, so big difference in taste there.
What about the glass pipes and bongs that head shops sell supposedly for ‘tobacco only’? We all know people are smoking weed with them, but someone, somewhere must be smoking some sort of tobacco from them for that ruse to carry on.