Reverse Pack Method?

[Rusty Mouse]

Is this where he hold the pipe in his hand upside down and lifts tobacco to it and shoves it in letting whatever falls out fallout??
If so, to the best of my knowledge it's an old Danish way of doing it.


I developed a 'technique' I've had alot of success with, but it has alot of steps.
1. I put the pipe in one hand
2. I grab tobacco between the thumb and two fingers
3. I put the grabbed up tobacco in the pipe.
4. I use the now empty hand to pick up a light.
5. I light the lighter.
6. I hold the flame just above the tobacco
7. I inhale gently.

I'm sorry, but that sounds just too ridiculous to even consider trying. Quit wasting my time! :lol:

 

[dshpipes]

Is this where he hold the pipe in his hand upside down and lifts tobacco to it and shoves it in letting whatever falls out fallout??
If so, to the best of my knowledge it's an old Danish way of doing it.


I developed a 'technique' I've had alot of success with, but it has alot of steps.
1. I put the pipe in one hand
2. I grab tobacco between the thumb and two fingers
3. I put the grabbed up tobacco in the pipe.
4. I use the now empty hand to pick up a light.
5. I light the lighter.
6. I hold the flame just above the tobacco
7. I inhale gently.

I'm sorry, but that sounds just too ridiculous to even consider trying. Quit wasting my time! :lol:

+1 on that! Sheesh. Some people.

 

[taharris]

That's actually a really good point, Uber. That school of thought of "pack lighter than you think you need to," applies beautifully for those that have a heavy hand, but if you tend to go light anyway, I can see it having the opposite effect. I think I'm somewhere in the middle, meanwhile also a slave to my own whimsy--sometimes I have to make a conscious effort, undistracted, to how I'm packing, or else I'll get outside after lighting 300 times and say, "...stupid pipe, stupid tobacco...what the hell did I do?" :lol:

OK, so lets take the "hand heaviness" factor out of the equation.

With rubbed out tobacco (flakes are a different story all together) I tend to gravity fill the pipe and then tap the side of the bowl sharply half a dozen times to pack the tobacco. I then add more tobacco and repeat until I have a little mound at the top, which I gently fold in using very little pressure. I must admit that this method makes initial lighting a little difficult (it tends to result is several false starts and relights) but the end result is a nice cool smoke. I will, however, add one key caveat: I only tamp very very gently with the spoon end of the tamper and never the flat end. I think that the way you tamp is just as important as the way you pack. If you tamp too hard you can ruin all of the effort you put into learning how to pack loosely.

Just my 2 cents...

Todd

 

[puros_bran]

Ok. Now we are getting somewhere.
I have tampers. Eric gifted me an Eagle. Ol'Dawg gifted me a piece of Georgia Hardwood embedded with gold nugget. Spud 15 sent me a stupid cool 'Ammo Tamp'.
And on rare 'let's make a production' smokes I use one of these. BUT.

I learned at the Ken Collins School of Smoke. I use a finger as a tamp. Two good reasons to do so. 1 you always have a finger laying about. 2 You will not over tamp.

 

[taharris]

You will not over tamp.

At least not twice! :affraid:

Todd

 

[brainitch]

Ok. Now we are getting somewhere.
I have tampers. Eric gifted me an Eagle. Ol'Dawg gifted me a piece of Georgia Hardwood embedded with gold nugget. Spud 15 sent me a stupid cool 'Ammo Tamp'.
And on rare 'let's make a production' smokes I use one of these. BUT.

I learned at the Ken Collins School of Smoke. I use a finger as a tamp. Two good reasons to do so. 1 you always have a finger laying about. 2 You will not over tamp.

----^---- What he said, I'm with that guy~!

 

[Kyle Weiss]

I think to this date I have not ever once "over tamped." When I pack a pipe, I have ('speshully in teh beginninz--noobcakez) overpacked a pipe, but that's a pretty easy fix--back looser. I prefer to use a finger to pack the pipe. I use the tamper to ever-so-slightly smooth out the top ash, especially when I've found the ember to be waning--and it heats right back up. I have allergies and tend to rub my eyes quite a bit, so an ashy finger would not make my eyes or contacts real happy, and I'm not talented enough to use another finger. Tamps are fine for me.

I'm not sure how any of that applies to what's been said so far, but I think everyone should get something from it. I don't really give a flying eff today.

 

[George Kaplan]

Also, thank you Kyle for using impact properly as a verb. :cheers: The other, more common, and incorrect way has always been a pet peeve of mine. But to be honest, I'm kind of a dick.

the guy's method doesn't lend itself to be the kind that would impact a pipe with tobacco too easily

I wouldn't give me too much credit, I'm pretty sure I'm capable of using the "wrong" variant, which I'm assuming is akin to: "Boy, that Jackknife Plug sure has an impact!" Oh well. Pretty good for an uneducated jerk, eh?

"HAS an impact" is perfectly correct, because you're using it as a noun here. "A has an impact on B." When people say "A impacts B" they think they're saying "A influences B". They're actually saying "A fills up and congests B, leaving no empty space." This is debatable due to common usage, but I'm going to abandon this tangent now because:
A: I vowed to not hijack any more threads this month, and,
B: I'm sounding like I must have a painfully impacted colon to be bothered by such trivial things. :x
Time to go chase some kids out of my yard...

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Well, I enjoyed that digression, I'm a (hack) writer and can't do math, so I'd better learn all I can about this kind of crap. Thank you. 8)

On with the regularly-scheduled programming.

 

[Dave_In_Philly]

I think this is what I've also heard called the "anti gravity fill". Never really worked for me, but to each their own.
Also, thank you Kyle for using impact properly as a verb. :cheers: The other, more common, and incorrect way has always been a pet peeve of mine. But to be honest, I'm kind of a dick.

the guy's method doesn't lend itself to be the kind that would impact a pipe with tobacco too easily

I spend quite a lot of time in court discussing car accidents and I can't tell you how my times I hear "that's when he impacted my car".

 

[Kyle Weiss]

I spend quite a lot of time in court discussing car accidents and I can't tell you how my times I hear "that's when he impacted my car".

I wish someone would impact my car... with a bunch of awesome pipe tobacco! :cheers:

 

[Cigar2you]

I just tried this method and wow what a wonderful smoke! I used Virginia woods and my radice

 

[Rusty Mouse]

I just tried this method and wow what a wonderful smoke! I used Virginia woods and my radice

That tranquil old man was on to something after all! Thanks for givin' it a shot Glad it worked out for ya.

 

[s.ireland]

Well I hadn't heard of this method (heard of many, many others) until you posted this link... I decided to try it with some rubbed out Marlin Flake and a little Shell briar Canadian that has a somewhat narrow chamber... I'm about 2/3 through the bowl now and I have to say it's a cool, cool smoke. And I have not needed to relight.

I think I'll keep using this method with my smaller pipes (most of my pipes are small) because I feel like it's given me a better pack than my usual two-part tamper method. The chamber on this pipe is too narrow for my stubby fingers so I am forced to use a tamper...

Thanks for the link!

I have since used this method 2 more times... Once with a average ribbon cut and once with some rubbed out flake... Both times I got a great smoke. I'm sure I will continue to use this method.

 

[PipeGeek]

I've seen the video and after I read this thread, I tried this out tonight. The tobacco I used was a local aromatic blend (Creme Brule) ribbon cut, kinda moist. It worked as advertise, and I had a great smoke, but it did leave a bit of a mess on the palm (easy to wash off, though).

Messier than my normal method (I could probably improve that with practice), but effective nonetheless.

 

[kieveryuu]

I came across this video/method a couple months ago and gave it a try. It worked nicely. 8) Since then I have tried it several more times with varying success. What I have noticed others have also, which includes the following:

It works best, for me at least, with a smaller bowl.
It requires a little prep work. (Not a problem when inside.)
It can be messy if you are not careful.
Final thought: I really like the spiral method of packing and have been trying to find a way to get that kind of pack on the go when using my pipe kit. Still working on it.

It is nice to see other people trying this and commenting on it. Especially with regard to bowl size and tobacco types.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Yeah, I can just imagine myself out in the field, trying to cut thin ribbons to rub out from my JKP with a knife, sitting on a sharp rock, wind blowin' a terror, and gently trying to coerce a spiral of tobacco into my dirty MM... :lol:

I'll see if I can (in a more controlled environment, with some ribbon-cut) load up this way today and report back. 8)

 

[s.ireland]

Yeah I don't think JK plug out in the wilderness would be an ideal time to utilize this method

As far as everyone that has mentioned how "messy" this method can be:

I found that a European style screw on "coin" tin lends itself to a less messy pack. I simply fluffed up enough tobacco for a bowl and let it sit on top of the rest of the tin's contents and turned my pipe upside down and presto! Reverse pack and clean palms

 

[Kyle Weiss]

*nods solemnly*

Nice tip, Shane. I think my EMP just might be the tobacco and tin lid for this today. More news later.

8)

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Okay, okay okay. Okay.

So, I have to say part of my grumblings about a new (or new-to-me) packing/filling technique was--there's too many of them. I've tried a lot of them, and most of them are complicated and stupid. I finally found an adaptive method I use that takes about three techniques and combines them, in a simple manner: fill loose, pack a little, add some to the top, check for "pack density," and have at it. This is for rubbed-out flake, ribbon or cube cut... that is, unless I do the flake-stuff variant where I ball it up in the palm of my hand to roughen it up a little, and put it in the pipe.

Today, I got a little nerdy. Much more than my whimsical fill-check-go method that seems to work.

So, I thought about it, and attempted this with some EMP with my Danish Thrift straight billiard, which I seem to always reach for when experimenting, and went forward as the guy in the video demonstrates.

Some thoughts, before I get to how it smoked:

I tried this first with EMP, a pretty uniform ribbon. Just for kicks, I wanted to know how much was actually going into the pipe. So, I brought out my nice kitchen scale with pour-cup attachment, and weighed out 1 gram (1000mg) of tobacco. I limited my "twists" to 15 twists in the hand. I did this five times, and weighed the contents of what went into the pipe, by emptying it, back onto the scale--it was within 10mg - 20mg each time, and in this particular billiard, 650mg - 700mg went into the pipe each time. Points for consistency. For the hell of it, I then emptied everything and tried this in a different pipe, a cob, and tried Storm Crow's Connecticut Yankee, which is more of a cube cut--same deal, but a little more tobacco went into the chamber repeating this method, and weighing them.

I then tried this with different pipes--this is where it got interesting. Flatter-topped, freehands and really wide-brimmed bulldogs got varied results with weight of tobacco that went into the chamber, and sometimes was a bit too loose to justify a "good bowl," which would suggest to do this method twice rather than just once. Though I don't use CY in anything but cobs, I used the cube-cut stuff just to test--it had a tougher time getting in the chambers of "odd pipes."

So, back to the EMP and Danish Thrift, I loaded it up as per the video and smoked...very nice. I probably could have packed it down a little more and topped off with a bit more, because I only got about half the smoking time I'm used to. It was a two-match smoke--though it was VERY windy outside, and probably led to a bit hotter/faster burning than I would have liked. I think a few eddies made off with a few strips in the meantime.

Conclusion:

Tobacco: Ribbon, "fluffed flake" or cube works great.

Pipe: Varied. Plateaux-edge, freehand, wide brins and anything but "standard" shapes seemed to be a little weird and/or inconsistent, or takes some finesse I obviously need to practice on.

Hand versus lid: Shane, I hate to say it, but the lid idea sounded great, but there was something about how the hand can be "cupped" a little and not allow the tobacco to be pushed around that seemed to work a little better, and you can kind of control how it gets loaded. It was even worse with some some of the wider-brimmed pipes--the hand, messy, seemed to work better.

Smoke: Again, a windy day wasn't a good variable to add to this. It did smoke consistent, it added a bit more "breathability" to the smoke, which I wasn't used to. I think I'm used to packing a little more tobacco in the chamber and having a bit of a tighter draw. The pipe got a little hot, but again, new packing technique, plus wind, plus my favored draw method might have been a bit unfair to it.

Overall: I'm going to keep trying this and see if it gives me any different results in different pipes. I wasn't going to smoke three different tobaccos in different pipes all in one sitting, lest I lose my lunch. :lol: I don't think the "vortex" or twist of the tobacco lends itself to much more than just the amount that goes into the pipe, which is important. There's no way (that I could tell) there was this perfect helix of tobacco really making the smoke "better," so I'm inclined to assume it's just a way of really consistently packing the bacca.

I'm glad I went through the rigamarole and tested it out. Hooray for impromptu quasi-science. Heheheh

8)