V-man
I have zero distilled water in the house. Being as I live in Delaware, it's true that a copious amount of water distilled by God falls on the yard fairly frequently... but that's why we had the old roof replaced last Spring, to keep that distilled water out. When I want distilled, I turn to Balvenie. Close as distilled water gets to the home office where I am typing this and where I roll my sticks is that from time to time a gust of wind may knock some of God's best against the window.
Seriously, this whole distilled water obsession seems to me about as silly as hand sanitizer. Hell, I even change my motorcycle oil without blue latex gloves. I have gone so far as to swat a fly all hand nekkid. It's a dirty world. I'm a dirty guy.
I smoked a store bought gar today while watching the Army Navy game. Someone on the cigar.com forum sent it to me, I forget why. It was an Opus X. Prolly cost the guy a fortune. Good cigar; tho I was comforted to find that I myself have rolled and stashed any number of gars which I thought tasted just as good. Bliss or Marc could readily roll you one that looks as good. But the point I am spiraling around to light on is that the water used to wet the leaf and mix the glue that went into making that revered Opus X ... you almost certainly would not want to drink it. Fair chance of giardia or at least Moctezuma's revenge if you did. Yet the guy who pays a fortune for a stick like that will treat it with kid gloves, use distilled in his humidifier, put it in a humidor seasoned with distilled, like it was all a religious ritual. Bull. If you are worried about chlorine, leave the water set & that stuff will fly away. Or use bottled. Distilled is just throwing money out the window. I know guys insist on distilled water for their glue even. Honestly, how much fluoride is in the half drop of water you fetch when you dab a fingertip in the glue pot? What's smaller than a nano?
Mold? Never had it.
Now pay close attention to this right here => The method I show in that vid is not any method I use at this point. It is not THE method. It is only A method. I'm just showing A simple way that any ordinary guy can pop out his first gar without driving himself crazy worrying about details. The farther you progress prolly the drier you roll. This is not a demo of the perfect method. It's simply to show a newb to say "I can do this!" That's it. There are plenty and plenty of vids showing cats who have rolled hundreds of thousands over a 30 year career. They mostly demonstrate how to lay a flawless wrapper. That's not this. I was just trying to fill a hole. I asked myself: "Where's the vid shows a guy how to pop out a presentable stick right off the bat?"
Take the test gar I rolled last night: a single core leaf of Corojo 99, two and a half leaves of Nicaraguan seco, bound in a half leaf of Connecticut broadleaf I scored at FX Smith's, wrapped in a half leaf of CT shade scored the same place. The Nic and Corojo came as is right from the bag shipped from Whole Leaf Tobacco. The Nic had been in that bag for a couple years, in fact. Zero water involved. The CT Broadleaf was prolly the most carefully dampened up, being as I had to unravel some pretty squiggly wrapper leafs to flatten one out. They were in the conditioning tub a couple days. The CT shade was prolly only in the conditioning chamber half a day. I set the result in front of the hearth a couple hours and fired it up. Entirely satisfactory.
Do not wet your filler. Only dampen your binder just enough to make it flexible. Then dampen your wrapper so's it will lay flat. Dry the stick and spark it. Mold does not come into the discussion.
Nor should any other species of worry. Just whip out a stick like it ain't no rocket surgery.
Have fun is it.
Hey this Opus X above is the first gar pic from my new phone. I have high hopes it will snap much better images than my old pocket phone.
