Was looking a little while ago at LO Dominican olor seco leaves, would they be usable as binder?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
I see a lot of talk about people sorting thru their seco looking for cheap binder and wrapper. I go the opposite direction. I use wrapper for binder. Why? Cause it gives you that much smoother of a bound bunch. Obviously, you'll get that much smoother of a wrapped gar surface if you are laying your thin wrapper over a smooth bound bunch. Specially when you are using a diaphanous CT shade wrap. How? Wrapper leaves are extra wide. Fold your wrapper leaf in half lengthwise, with the outer side outwards. Now you have your veins criss-crossing each other, so that you have a stronger, binder-worthy leaf to work with. Feel the need to save money? Sort thru your wrapper and see if you don't come up with a supply of leaves you think are too holey or mottled to make good wraps.
Right now, I am rolling my two-a-day muscle memory making daily habit plumpfectos with filler that was sold to me as LO Mata Fina binder. Binder my arse... that stuff came in narrow and fulla holes. Useless as binder. But it's still tasty Mata. So I strip out the stems and use it for filler. I bind it with Indonesian wrapper cause that Indo is extra wide and smooth, but I don't care for the color of it, and I don't like it's green taste right under my tongue. Then I wrap them with CT Shade I scored from FX Smith's . I just now burnt one here on the smoking porch where I am typing this.
So I am going the opposite direction: binder as filler, wrapper as binder, and the most delicate possible wrapper as wrapper.
There's one super wide Indo in the leaf conditioning chamber right now as we speak, along with two CT shade halves. In another hour or so, bind. Couple three hours after that, wrap.