Roll your own...

I have found myself smoking rollies (hand rolled cigarettes)more than conventional cigarettes lately but have not yet mastered the art of rolling a symetrical, firm and easy to smoke cigarette.

I’d love to know you opinions on the best method, especially if I’d like to do it one handed to impress my lady friends(the cigarette that is!!) Are there any smokers out there that can help me.

BTW I’m not advocating this digusting habit and are not asking you to take up this practice in order to answer my question!

A rolling machine. Probably be able to pick one up for around 10-15 bucks at a head shop.(Its been a long time since I bought one though)

Spooje how am I supposed to impress my lady friends by pulling out a rolly machine when I’m at my local pub? :slight_smile:

There’s got to be a sure fire method for rolling a decent smoke without the aid of a machine…

You want to impress the ladies?

Pull out and unfiltered Camel or Kool or Lucky Strike.

And try not to hack up a lung cookie! :smiley:

Nononononono. No rolling machine. You will look like a true bonehead if you whip out a rolling machine in public.

Just keep practicing. Every new smoke is different, which is one thing that makes rolling your own butts so much more interesting than smoking pre-fab fags. If you stick to the hand-mades and don’t cheat by buying a pack of regular cigarettes, you’ll have it down pat within a week.

Don’t bother with that one-hand nonsense, either. Just take the paper on the ends with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, make the fold where you want it, pinch off a good amount of tobacco, smooth it into shape with your index fingers while you hold the paper steady with your thims and middle fingers, jerk the bottom of the paper up with your thumbs, neatly flip the top over with your index fingers, continue smoothing with the thumbs on the bottom, raise to lips and moisten the gum with the tip of your tongue, seal, tap the ends to pack the loose tobacco, snap the finished cigarette jauntily into your mouth, and light up.

Phew. That makes it look harder than it is.

I’m an ex-smoker and I used to roll my own.

I always found the machines would roll the thing too tight, and the only tip I can give you is not to worry* if the tobacco hangs out of the ends as you roll it up, you can pinch it off after you finish rolling.

[ex smoker mode]
*Heck, why worry about anything, you’ll be dead soon anyway
[/ex smoker mode]

Look for handrolling tobacco, you’ll want shag cut. Drum used to be good but went south a couple years ago. There are lots of imitations though, around here, Samson, Outlook, and Jester. It all says it is from Holland.

Shag cut tends to be a bit moist so you don’t want to roll it too tight or it won’t smoke.

Look for it around pouches of pipe tobacco.

Never smoke to impress your GF, you’ll only look like an ass.

Effie Perrin. She always rolled Sam Spade’s cigarettes. At least she did that one time in that one movie. The one with the bird statue. He had to lick his own paper though. What’s up with that?
-Rue.

What bare said.

And practice…don’t use a wussy machine.

I rolled my own for 26 years (I quit, again.) I never could stand the taste of premade smokes, plus they are way stinkier. Forget doing it with one hand…just practice alot, you’ll get it. I could roll a beautiful perfect cigarette in less than 10 seconds while driving a semi, but it took me awhile to get that good.

[sub]Or, you know, you could quit smoking. Misery loves company![/sub]

“That” movie was The Maltese Falcon - the best movie ever made, bar none. Effie rolled Sam’s cigarette as she sat on the corner of his desk talking about Ms. Wonderly (who was actually Bridget O’Shaughnessy, who was actually Mary Astor). Effie, of course, could see through her and knew that she wasn’t on the up and up. She gave Sam the cigarette to finish because she’s too much of a lady to put her tongue and his cigarette. Sam then lit it with a reuseable match. Later on, Effie takes Ms. O’Shaughnessy in for the night when Caspar Gutman and Joel Cairo are looking for her. You see, there’s this bird, or really, a statue of a bird…oh, go rent the damn movie yourself.

BTW, I call my secretary “Effie.” She’s in on the joke.

HIJACK

YEAH! That reusable match thing! I have NEVER seen one outside of that film.

Where can I get one? I WANT one!

When I worked for the VA House of Delegates the committee rooms not only had a few reuseable matches left, but these terrific ashtrays that had a little ash tender right in the center. As you smoked, you put your cigarette in the ash tender, gave it a little twirl, and your smoke would come out with a perfect tip. No unsightly ash falling over your suit and the cigarette burned evenly. I still have an ashtray, but all of the reuseable matches are long gone. Those things looked like white phosporus flairs going off. 30s and 40s-era household furnishings are so damn stylish.

white phosphorus flares white phosphorus flares white phosphorus flares

its as equally hard to type it as it is to say it, evidently

All throughout my formidable years, when I smoked pot, I couldn’t roll a J to save my life and smoked premade cigarettes.

Now that I quit smoking pot, the price of cigarettes has demanded that I roll my own at a substantially cheaper price. I must pay 11 bucks for a carton and a half of smokes, easy.

The trick to rolling is not trying to make it nice and round at all. In fact, it was only after I gave up trying to make a perfect cigarette that I found I could make one.

I agree that shag is a good way to start, but I don’t like shag cut tobacco much. I stick with the Bugler/Kite tobacco which is entirely similar to regular pre-made cigarette tobacco.

This is how I roll a smoke, as best as can be described.

I open the papaer and plop some tobacco in it. It should cover about two thirds of the paper width-wise and maybe 3/4 length wise, and be about as thick as a standard pen. Of course, this is just eyeballing, don’t go measuring anything.

Once you’ve done that, close the paper over the tobacco and pinch it where there is no tobacco (where the ends of the width of the paper meet after “folding”) Stay close to the center. You’ll never, ever get a good smoke if you try and roll from the ends.

Now, slowly “roll” the tobacco in this make-shift paper envelope. Loosely apply pressure at first, and increase as the tobacco settles into shape. Again, as someone else mentioned, the “tightness” of the tobacco pack will vary with the style of tobacco you use. Shag is very poist, and a tight roll only causes it to extinguish itself.

As you’re rolling it tighter, the tobacco will settle out toward the edges and the diameter will aproach about half-a-pen. You can gte larger cigarettes later as you master it, but shit man, this is a non-filter. Go easy on yourself.

Once you’ve achieved the right diameter/tightness, roll the non glued side down almost all the way; leave about 5 millimeters (about a 1/5 of an inch) of paper at this end. Now, this is the trickiest part IMO: Pinch the tobacco so it causes a fold in this part of the cigarette, and roll it all the way up. Lick and seal, then puff away.

Again, this is the only way I can roll them. They used to be skimpier in the middle because I’d roll them around too much before pinch-and-sealing, but that comes with time. And always roll from the center. As you roll you can “slide” your thumbs sideways a bit to keep the pressure about equal over the whole smoke, but I would consider that an “advanced” technique only after rolling quite a few without doing that.

Good luck. I crutched on a rolling machine for quite some time, until once when I was away I had left the machine at home. I had to learn or pay exhorbitant smoke prices. took me a weekend and I never went back. In fact, I roll filters into my smokes now. Neat!

Back in my college days I used to roll, ah, cigarettes using a well worn dollar bill. It gave a more consistent roll than doing it by hand, and unlike rolling machines I could vary the tightness.

By the way, what the heck is a “reusable match”? Sounds like a lighter to me!

Also by the way, here in the over-protected state of Connecticut I haven’t been able to purchase “strike anywhere” matches since I was a kid. I was in Minnisota recently and bought 4 boxes of them for pocket change at a gas station. I am reliving my youth!

Oh, boy. Trying to describe the reuseable match…

Imagine a little container, about the size and shape of a film cannister (we all know what those look like, don’t we? we are talking about rolling your own). The one’s I saw were brown glass. The lid of the cannister has a hole in the middle of it, with a little handle sticking out. You pull the handle out and attached to the end is something very like a match tip. The cannister holds lighter fluid (if I remember correctly), and the tip of the “match” absorbs the fluid. When you strike the match against the side of the cannister (there was a strike plate, maybe made of flint?) you get a flame. Light your Pall Mall, or Chestefield King, or Lucky Strike (LSMFT), or Old Gold, or whatever and puff away. You don’t have to throw the match away, you just blow it out and stick it back in the cannister for the next time you need a light.

The whole setup has to be surrounded by a cigarette box, ashtray, etc. to get the full effect. Since everyone and their brother smoked, there were all sorts of gadgets and paraphenalia (stop snickering) associated with it. Life Magazine even did a short photo spread on smoking etiquette.

Ah, I see. Sort of a precursor to the Zippo lighter, in a 2 piece form. Thanks for the help!

Back when I was still smoking, I made an attempt at rolling my own and failed miserably at it. All my cigarettes came out looking like some kind of half-assed Cheech & Chong reject joint. I went back to buying them at the store.

Not really. It wasn’t something you carried about with you, unless you weren’t concerned about a major explosion in your pocket.

(Is that a Reusable Match exploding in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?)

The Zippo dates back to WWI, when the Austro-Hungarian Army developed a reasonable pocket lighter. If they had devoted their time to developing a reasonable pocket had grenade, the 20th century might have developed altogether differently.

Sadly, the Austro-Hungarian pocket lighter was ugly as sin…looked a bit like a machine-gun cartridge. Not at all what a gentleman would carry in the pocket of his evening clothes. So an American swiped the technology and created the smooth, handsome Zippo.

To get the straightest and most even, um, cigarettes, I fold the paper a little more than a third from the bottom, put in the smoking material in two pinches, a 1/3 of the way from each end - there will be less in the middle and on the ends. Fold the paper over, roll backwards until the paper just covers the tobacco, then roll it up with your thumbs under where the little heaps were, lick and stick. The tobacco will be distributed evenly across the cigarette, with a little hanging from the ends. This technique is really good to avoid getting it too tight in the middle.