The Making of Tobacco Cigars

Filed in archive Information on June 30, 2010

Tobacco is imported always tightly compressed and apparently quite dry and crisp. Sometimes it is in the form of full leaf in bundles and tied around by one of its own leaves; sometimes the midribs have been been removed- the material is then known as 'strips'. American varieties are exported in these conditions. The more tender kinds such as the Turkish, Chinese and Ceylonese are carefully packed leaf upon leaf.

In the manufacture of cigars, the cigar tobacco leaves after being impregnated with water and steam so that they easily open out are stripped of their midribs, smoothed and sorted, the perfect half leaves being put on one side to be used as wrappers. One of this strips is cut into baloon gore and fragments of the imperfect leaves and cuttingsknown as the 'fillers' being placed at one end, the strip is wrapped round them. Over this is then wound spirally a long narrow rectangular slip called the 'wrapper', connecting at the lighting end and finishing at the pointed or mouth end.