cracking and splitting

Amos Umwhat

well, looking through the other questions I may have found my answer in a post by Krieg, but I'll ask anyway. Why is it that I can buy a batch of cigars, give them a little time, and some will swell, split and crack and the rest from the same batch have no problems? I'm careful in lighting, thought "maybe it was right under the humidifier and got too moist", but really, all controllable variables being the same, still, some are fine and others will smoke for a while and then swell from the inside, wrapper splits and falls apart, very disturbing. So, am I doing something wrong? Were they rolled too tight? Is there a "Loki" of the cigar gods? Any help is appreciated.

kuzi16

cigars are a hand made product. two cigars that are the same brand and from the same box could still have differences in how they are rolled.
i dont think that this is the problem when it comes to cracking and splitting.
usually this is because of a variance in RH. maybe over humidified, maybe under humidified. a cigar that is rolled "too tight" will have a difficult draw. the filler will be bunched incorrectly in that situation causing that tight draw. in a tight draw caused by improper rolling, you would not be able to get a good enough pull on the cigar for the cigar to burn enough to cause splitting. it would just go out repeatedly.

bacon.jay

It could be a number of factors, even to the point of being unrelated to the storage conditions of your humidor. Environmental smoking factors, i.e. temperature, ambient humidity, and even wind (assuming you're outdoors) can affect the way a cigar smokes on any given day. Higher temps and humidities and rapid changes of such things can split a cigar like a banana. For me personally, if I light a cigar outside in the winter and then bring it inside, it will split within 5 minutes. Other things that have nothing to do with smoking conditions, though rare, could also be to blame.

For example, it could be differences in the true amount of filler used. If a cigar tends to be rolled fairly tightly to begin with, even the slightest amount of filler over what would normally be used could make it split or crack with just the heat from being lit. It could also be due to the method or style that the filler is bunched together by the torcedor, or cigar roller, and if your box is a mixed batch (2 different torcedors' rolled the cigars) then there could be slight differences in construction. Though the latter may happen from time to time, I think that most factories try to box their cigars together so that all the cigars in one box are from the same torcedor, which ensures some level of consistency, however minor it may be. This is just my take and there are probably others that will agree, but others will probably chime in as well with their opinions.

Amos Umwhat

thanks guys, you're pretty much on track where I was thinking too, but I hadn't thought about the temperature, possibly a factor here. No tight draw issues on the ones I've had problems with. Hopefully won't lose too many good smokes this way.