True. I think hard woods will give you the smoothest finish. But something softer may pull a little moisture out. Plus you would want to stay away from anything with a lot of rosin. Guess the only real way to figure out what's best is to make a few.
Yeah, agreed. Totally reasonable for a one-off custom job. Well, these oak ones were the perfect material for these molds. No coating or anything, just hard and smooth = good.
There are so many factors involved that I learned over the past month or two of experimenting with this. Like - time you lose when something breaks. I lost a $200 motherboard on a print a few weeks back. It took time and money to fix it. There's obviously materials too, and losing your equipment for your own use when you are creating orders. Someone would have to be really dedicated and there would have to be a pretty large demand for molds for it to happen correctly, in my opinion. If it was easy and a big demand there would already be custom new molds everywhere. The demand is a big thing - I think it says something when only 2 places online will even sell leaf, and those choices are pretty limited compared to the commercial cigar choice at that. If the demand was higher, we'd have an Amazon for leaf sourcing with every type imaginable. I could probably fill everyone on this thread with molds in a few weeks or a month. Then where is the demand?
Lol, my 8 stick mold is apparently too large to print at a major print shop, and they can't print one of my 6 stick molds. My printer does them just fine. The other molds look in the $60-$100 range which is a little more than I would charge friends for doing one offs. That extra margin is probably their profit. You can get all these prices I'm talking about at Thingiverse in the "Apps" button on a "thing" you are viewing.
Yeah, for sure understood. The only incidental thing that causes a twitch in my needle there is on the "If there were demand then there would be an Amazon." The reason the needle twitches is that I think there could be such a demand, there just isn't now. That is true of any mass market-ish situation; something good was there in the ether but it had to be "tapped." When I realize how much I've learned from this about the cigars that I enjoy, then I think lots more people would enjoy this kind of enrichment to their cigar enjoyment. Three years ago I could not have told you what ligero was and would have been very vague about what "Habano" tobacco was, and I'd already been smoking cigars for 25 years by then!
Don't agree leaf availability is the main stumbling block. I'd reckon Thorsten Veblen is the dude with the answer. When you blow twelve bucks on a mediocre gar you pamper yourself. When you roll one better yourself for a buck you get your hands dirty. Of course, all this is speculation, cause we can't crack open people's heads and see what's ticking inside. But my feel tends to blame conspicuous consumption. After all, go down to the store & buy stick after stick & what you find is 99% of improvement occurs between around $3 to $6 ... and only half those are worth a match. After that, it's mostly fancy bands and slick promotions. In fact, for my money, at somewhere around ten bucks blenders start rolling the dice, trying too hard, & so the dud factor skyrockets.
It's the same breed that likes to CNC stuff, 3D print stuff, and shave with straight razors.I think it's the type of person that gets into rolling... we're a rare breed
Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
Another thing to consider is that with tobacco it is almost subscription-like revenue for the supplier. You are coming back if their stuff is good. They can hopefully depend on repeat customers to keep their business going. It doesn't really work that way with someone producing molds because once you buy one, not counting a freak accident, you probably don't need another in that ring size for your natural life.
I love my straight razor. For the first time in my life I can say that I love shaving.
Isn't "in that ring size" less of a consideration than the "another mold" part, considering you can take one parejo model, scale it to the 8 standard sizes, and print them all to the same (material, size) block of wood? Putting aside the "Moldless Pride" crowd, a typical roller might eventually want to have 37, 40, 42, 44, 46, 47, 50, 52, 52 torpedo, perfecto.
I agree. But are you going to buy all those again? You'll definitely get more tobacco, but your mold situation should be taken care of barring breakage. And how many people would want or be able to afford 10 molds each? I have a printer and I have ... maybe 4 ... molds here.
Another thought I had: If you print 10 molds, and you're trying to cover the cost of a $2k printer or CNC, which is an average guestimate there and not high by any means, you'd have to charge an extra $200 per mold to make up that cost. You'd have to get to 100 molds to bring it down to $20 extra per mold, assuming you never had a breakdown and required more parts. That's 10 people wanting 10 mold with money in hand and willing to pay for them. I doubt if we all collectively put in a purchase for what we wanted we would all get above 50 molds, let alone 100... but I could be wrong. But even at 100 molds, that's still an extra $20 the purchaser is paying, and makes it extremely hard to get into the $50-$75 range when you have consumables, time, and all that to factor in.
It's not always about covering the cost of the machine. Or at least not for me when it comes to building a CNC. It's at the end of the day having a CNC machine. For me it's just like any other hobby. Lets face it, $2k on a hobby these days is just a drop in the bucket. I have more than that tied up in guns. And have friends that have more than that tied up in a single gun for that matter. It's the same for just about any sport you are into. Remember, for most of us here, the home rolling is just something to do to pass the time. And when someone in our little community has the means to build something to help another brother out he does so almost always without question.
I agree. My comments are only addressing a previous post regarding producing enough molds to get them consistently in the $50-$75 range. I think our points say the same thing - this is too small of a demand to try to get at a low price via a higher production. The math doesn't work out. And when you try to make it work out, it's no longer fun.
Looks like some lucky bastard got that thing for $41 delivered.
Item condition:
Used
