The Half Ashed Cigar Forum

It was discussed on the show a few weeks back about the cigar leaving a narrower ash than ring gauge. I mentioned that I thought thicker wrappers showed this more than thin ones. So here's a thick San Andres wrapper on a small cigar. This is a really big difference here and makes me wonder if the wrapper doesn't burn away more than the binder/filler.

Makes sense to me. I've got a thin Ecuadorian conn. wrapper now and the ash is almost as big as the cigar body.


Kid Corona

The discussion on the show actually centered on cigar vs. ash length, but RG is an equally perplexing aspect of this. Some early thoughts are:
-Wrapper is potentially slightly more hydrated in most cigars unless significantly aged in the same location (12+months). This would cause the evaporation just prior to combustion to decrease volume significantly. (See ICC .com under "Wayne's Corner" for a more scientific writeup on this. The difference in smoke color off the foot/head is attributed to combustion vs. evaporation)
-thinner delicate wrappers have the same ratio of whole:ash volume degradation but the change is nearly imperceptible.
-Thinner wrappers have less processing, thus they break down very little during combustion. Conversely, thicker wrappers need to be processed significantly longer in order to be ready to smoke/MFG. That additional processing allows the combustion to be more complete, which means less matter remains in the form of ash afterwards. Therefore, the change in size is more significant.

Now, how all this plays into ash length is somethign I'm not educated enough to comment on. I'll try to remedy that shortly though!

That all makes sense to me! T'anx!

Thanx for confirmation on
our theories!


Kid Corona