The Pipe Bit: Glossary #4: Pirates!

By Chris Rentner

            (Note to my web staff:  For the next Pipe Bit, I want a picture of my humble self decked out as a pirate.  I can bring the peg leg and eye patch from home, but I need a cutlass and a parrot.  The parrot can be stuffed, if necessary.

            What I’m gonna do is tie in blend cuts like rope and coin with pirates.  Get it?  Because pirates use, like, rope and they have, you know, treasure with gold coins—ooh!  I’ll need some gold coins, too, real gold, for the picture.  You can take the gold coins from the store register.  And an audio file too, I think of me growling “Aaarrgh, matey” and a video clip of me waving the cutlass [next six pages snipped]).

            Chris—not in the budget.  Sorry—your web staff.

 

            As the Cold Dead Hand of Management has canned my theme, I’ll just get to the content.

            Most pipe tobacco blends come neatly packaged and ready to smoke, just open the pouch or tin and fill your briar.  Some blends, though, require work before you can fill your pipe.

            A very old-school type of blend is rope cut.  This does indeed look, and feel, like a corded rope.  The tobacco is twisted and bound into this shape; and since fine cuts of tobacco would not hold the shape, rope cut blends consist of uncut tobacco leaves—a true rarity in pipe tobacco blends.   Sometimes called navy cut, the purpose of this type of style was to provide ease of transit on long sea voyages—not only could just the designated length of rope be sold, but the rope cut would keep its moisture damn near forever, thus erasing concerns that a blend may dry out.  To smoke this type of blend, the smoker would cut a small chunk off the rope, then mince that chunk into bits to fill the pipe.  Rope tobaccos were also very strong, as the oils from the leaves would mingle thoroughly, and for a long period.  Currently, only Samuel Gawith makes rope cut blends, to my knowledge.

            Two styles of pipe tobacco blends require not cutting but “rubbing out” (pauses for jokes).  Okay, this term means the smoker takes the tobacco and “rubs” it “out” between the hands, in a “heh-heh-heh” gesture, breaking the blend into smaller pieces.  Once a blend is rubbed out, the pipe can be filled.  Most commonly this type of pipe mixture is called flake.  A flake blend (not the blend component, see Glossary #2, Cutting Room) is pressed into a “cake,” a small thin tablet of tobacco.  This is then rubbed out.  Coin cut, or birdseye, blend styles are pressed too, but cut into discs.  Both flake and coin styles pressure the oils in tobacco leaves by pressing; but once rubbed out, can dry quickly.  Peter Stokkebye makes a coin cut blend, called Curly Cut, and Sam Gawith has a legendary Full Virginia Flake.  Also, Cornell and Diehl makes a brick-style flake called Pirate Kake (sigh).

            These cuts provide a change of pace for the pipe smoker, and are a reminder of the long history and evolution of pipe tobacco blends—for pirates and everyone else.