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Posted By: Dan

Cobb was an avid Pipe tobacco smoker, not cigarette. It would lend to the argument that the tobacco contained in the tin would be pipe tobacco and that the statement on the back of the Cobb/Cobb "Smoking Tobacco World" simply implies smoking tobacco (see references below), cut plug tobacco (flake cut) was very useful and used by many for various purposes.

Why does everyone jump on the cigarette? In this era, there were countless PIPE TOBACCO smokers.

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Flake Cut

One of the synonyms of the flake style of cutting is Navy Cut, which owes its name to the fact that the British sailors carried whole briquettes of tobacco with them, cutting off thin slices when necessary. This, of course, meant that the smoker had to have certain skills – one can imagine how often on a long voyage a sailor would have to make use of his little board and tobacco knife.

Cut Plug is yet another name for slices of pressed tobacco. Cut Plug was one of the first means for producing tobacco industrially that was immediately ready for the pipe. Strangely enough, the first to develop this method were the British, who were usually conservative in all such things, and not the Americans, who always wanted everything done quickly. Later, ready-to-smoke tobaccos (sold under the name Ready Rubbed) began their triumphant procession through the shelves of the tobacco shops.

Today, uncut tobacco in the form of Plug is for one reason or another not so easy to find. Even so, there are still things to interest the serious smoker. Tobaccos cut in the Flake cut format (broad, thin slices) provide considerable opportunities for creativity. Inexperienced smokers or smokers in a hurry crush the tobacco slices and rub them with their fingers, then fill their pipes as if they were dealing with Ready Rubbed tobacco. But more sophisticated smokers use Flake Cut unrubbed. Packing a pipe properly with unrubbed flakes is a fairly complicated business, and numerous articles and guides have been written to help to explain it. Furthermore, the pipe used for such a method of packing should have a fairly wide bowl. Smoking a pipe packed in this way is also no easy business, but those who are experienced in doing it will assure you that it’s worth the effort.

Another means of cutting Flake tobacco is called Cube Cut. Here, the pressed tobacco is first cut into 3.5mm thick slices, and these in their turn are cut crossways so that regular tobacco cubes are made. Burley tobacco is usually produced in this way, but there are no rules without exceptions. On the subject of the size of the cubes, there are no precise standards, but many specialists are in agreement that traditional Cube Cut tobacco should have edges about 5mm in length. Any less, and the tobacco is considered to be granulated – a format that is particularly popular in North America. On the other hand, in recent years there has been a tendency to call all cube cut tobacco granulated, irrespective of the sides of the cubes.

After this, the tobacco briquettes are placed in another press, where they stay for several weeks under strictly regulated temperature and moisture conditions. The result is a briquette of exceptional density and durability, which is convenient for storage and transportation and which releases moisture only with extreme reluctance. So it is hardly surprising that this particular form of processing tobacco leaves was the most common for over a century, when pipe tobacco was for the most part used by smokers in the Old and the New Worlds and transportation of the product could take many months.

Before filling the pipe, the smoker cuts off the required amount of tobacco from the slab and rubs it according to his own preferences. Here there is a lot of room for experimentation on the width and shape of the cut.

But with the pace of life continually quickening and the number of devotees willing to spend time sawing up cubic briquettes getting smaller, it was necessary to come up with a type of tobacco that could be packed into a pipe easily. One of the methods that particularly suited the new trends was the flake.

Flake

Flake is the common name for an impressive group of tobaccos, and Flake Cut is a British development that has passed the test of time and the market. Basically, lots of tobaccos go through the Flake stage in their development, but they are subsequently given original names and only a few of them are actually called ‘flake’ in the usual understanding of the word. A flake is a thin layer about 1.5 mm thick produced by cutting a slab of pressed tobacco. Apart from its convenience for storage and transportation, pressed tobacco has another purpose: flake burns more slowly so it does not get so hot, and this ensures the smoker a cool, tasty smoke. This is the main reason why flake in its rubbed form is added to many tobacco mixtures.

Plug

Any tobacco mixture that has gone through the press is called plug, and consists of dense slabs around 4 cm thick. It should be pointed out that the pressing procedure is used not only for the convenience of storing and transporting tobacco, but primarily for giving it certain qualities of taste. After passing through the first stage of processing, the tobacco leaves are piled into the press, where they are squashed for a minimum of three hours. One of the major producers of pipe tobacco uses a press for this purpose that can exert a pressure of 55 tonnes and turn a metre-high pile of tobacco leaves into a slab 4cm thick.

Source sited: http://www.en.cigarclan.com/articles/2005/2/11/