Okay, smarty, so you're looking to die real quick? Cool, us too! James Dean did. So we're gonna roll ourselves up some cigarettes, and we don't care what the Surgeon General has to say about it.

Why do people roll their own cigarettes? Two reasons: (1) It's cheaper; and (2) It looks pretty cool (remember Travolta in Pulp Fiction and how excited Uma got when she checked out his smoke-rolling action?). It's cheaper because you do the work. It looks cool for a lot of reasons: you're a maverick who goes his or her own way; you are so hardcore that you don't need any punk filter; cowboys rolled their own smokes; and finally, it takes some skill. We are here to help you with the skill part (you're on your own with the cowboy part). We can't promise you entrance into the Land o' Cool, but at least we can get you rolling.

1. GET SOME ROLLING TOBACCO AND CIGARETTE PAPERS

You'll save some cash, doing it this way

Rolling tobacco varies in price, costing from about $1.00 per ounce up to about $2.50 per ounce for specialty tobaccos (for those of you who speak metric, there are about 28 grams in an ounce). Cigarette papers cost from 50 cents to $1.00 per pack, and you usually get 50 papers in a pack. An ounce of tobacco will usually get you around 20 cigarettes (or more if you like them thinner), so your price range for 20 cigarettes, when you roll your own, is from about $1.25 (for generic brands at the drug store) up to about $3.00 (for specialty brands at a tobacconist). A regular package of 20 cigarettes usually costs between $2.50 and $4.00, so you can save quite a bit by rolling your own.

Mmmm...tobacco

Which tobacco you will use is, of course, a matter of personal taste. Just try out some of the kinds of tobacco that are available to you and when you find one which is appealing, stick with it. Tobacco and rolling papers can be purchased from tobacco shops, drug stores, convenience stores, from catalogues, and online.

It is probably best to buy tobacco in small quantities, because it dries up quickly and it is less pleasant to smoke and very difficult to roll when it is dry. Buy small pouches and keep them sealed up as tightly as possible, preferably in an additional plastic bag (you can keep your papers in there, too). The large tins might seem like a better deal, but they don't keep the tobacco fresh or moist enough. Unless you smoke like an industrial solid waste-burning facility, you will end up fighting your way through half a can of dry, stale tobacco. If your tobacco does become too dry, you can try placing something moist in its container and sealing it until the tobacco becomes moister. We recommend a leaf of lettuce or a piece of apple, although apple can sometimes impart a flavor to the tobacco. You can also try using a small piece of wet cloth or napkin, but make sure to squeeze it out well or some of your tobacco will be too damp.

2. CHOOSE BETWEEN THE TWO METHODS

The world of roll-your-own, and the corresponding equipment, is divided up along these lines: Really rolling your own and Using a cigarette machine.

Really rolling your own

This is what people generally think of when they hear of rolling cigarettes, and it is both cheap and cool. To do this you require only manual dexterity (i.e. less than ten thumbs), cigarette papers and tobacco. If you're unbelievably cool, you could even try rolling with one hand. However, many people actually like the idea of having a filter, like grandmothers. For those folks, using a cigarette machine might be a better alternative.

Using a cigarette machine

Many people are not even aware that this option exists, but there are machines which allow you to make cigarettes with ordinary tobacco and cigarette tubes, which are exactly the same as those used with commercially-produced cigarettes. The tubes are, however, empty, and you have to use a little machine-dealie to fill them up. The advantage of this is that it gives you a smoke with a filter (you knowfor those who are weak ) which looks and smokes much like a store-bought smoke but at a much lower price. The disadvantages are that it is not cool, and cowboys, John Travolta and James Dean would all look upon you, crouched over the kitchen table with a red plastic gadget, with extreme scorn.

3. ROLL YOUR OWN WITH TWO HANDS

There are six steps:

1. Set up the paper
2. Measure the tobacco
3. Place the tobacco in the paper
4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder
5. Roll the paper over the tobacco
6. Seal and complete the cigarette

1. Set up the paper

Get a leaf of cigarette paper and place it on a flat surface or lay it flat on your hand. Cigarette papers are made with folds which create a kind of valley into which you're going to place the tobacco. Therefore, you should place the paper so that the folded parts are sticking upwards, genius. One of the folds will have a little strip of glue right at the top, which you will eventually lick in order to seal the finished cigarette. This strip of glue should be facing you, on the upright fold furthest from you.

2. Measure the tobacco

When you have your paper expertly laid out in front of you, pinch up a small quantity of tobacco. It's difficult to provide exact guidance in this matter; it's something you'll have to get a feel for as you practice. The tobacco companies recommend that you use about a gram and a half (one gram is about one twenty-eighth of an ounce). This might not be too helpful; after all, how many of us purchase quantities of dried plant matter by the gram? Not us law-abiding citizens, we'll tell you that for sure. Anywaya gram and a half of tobacco is a little less than a tablespoon by volume. So start out with that as a guideline and then experiment as you go and see how much tobacco you like to have in your rollies.

3. Place the tobacco in the paper

Once you have your small quantity of tobacco in your fingers, place it in the cigarette paper. Place it so that it is fairly evenly-distributed along the length of the paper and so that there is about a half-inch of tobacco sticking out at either end. If, as you roll, you find that you are one of those people who is forever squishing the stuff in the middle out to the edges, you should compensate by both: (1) Not doing that so much anymore; and (2) Putting a little bit more tobacco in the middle. If, on the other hand, you are one of those people who squeezes too hard at the edges and forces all the tobacco into the middle, you should place less in the middle and more at the edges. Straightforward enough, no?

4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder

From this point on it becomes rather less straightforward. For once you have placed the tobacco in the paper you must begin the part which will make you feel like you have all the grace of a blind midget trying to juggle fourteen umbrellas. Gently pick up the cigarette paper in both hands, with the index finger and middle finger of each hand on the far side of the paper and with each thumb on the near side of the paper. The fingers and thumbs should be on a forty-five degree angle, with the fingertips facing toward each other, so that if you touched them together they would form a little tent-like shape. They should not, however, be touching each other, as that would interfere with the rolling. With your fingers in place, begin moving the front fold of the paper up and down with your thumb. Don't pack it too hard.

5. Roll the paper over the tobacco

Once you have as nice a cylinder of tobacco as you think you can get (by the way, if you've been rolling the thing for more than a minute, you've been doing it way too long and it's probably about as smokable as a stick of petrified wood), you are ready to finish the rolling. This last part can be rather tricky, and if it is incorrectly executed, it can wreck an otherwise perfectly-rolled smoke. Here's how you do it: roll your thumbs downward until the edge of the paper is parallel with your cylinder of tobacco. Then, instead of rolling the paper back up, use your thumbs to fold it over the top of the cylinder and then start to roll it up. Only this time, with the edge of the paper tucked right in around the cylinder of tobacco, it really will start to roll up and look like a cigarette. Roll it up fairly tightly until only about the top half-inch of the far fold of paper with its strip of glue is exposed above the rolled paper and tobacco.

6. Seal and complete the cigarette

Quickly run your tongue along the strip of glue - moistening it, NOT slobbering on it-- and roll the cigarette together so that the glue seals it into a wee tube. Voila! A cigarette perfectly ready for you to smoke -- apart from you the fact that you almost certainly did it really badly if it was your first time, and from the fact that there is about a half-inch of hairy-looking tobacco sticking out at either end. The reason we asked you to leave the tobacco sticking out at the ends is so that you won't end up with the all-too-common phenomenon of having the ends be too loose or thinner than the rest of the smoke. Once you are finished rolling, you simply pinch off the loose tobacco with your fingernails or cut it off with scissors (not so cowboy-like) or with the bowie knife you carry in your boot (yeeeehah). The resulting cigarette will have a relatively even amount of tobacco throughout its length, and it will look and smoke better than if you had not left the tobacco sticking out. Trust us.

Now that you have a finished cigarette in front of you, pick the end which looks the best and stick that in your mouth. Then light the other end and pass the cigarette over to Uma Thurman. If she doesn't happen to be around, just smoke it yourself and enjoy the smooth taste of your own industriousness. You're going to get some tobacco in your mouth, but you don't care, do ya now, Tex?

4. ROLL WITH ONE HAND IF YOU CAN

It's really hard. . .

If you're feeling like a real superstar, you can try to move on from the skills you've learned from rolling your own cigarettes with two hands and roll with one hand. Please note that this is extremely difficult. We have rolled more cigarettes than you've had hot dinners and we have never rolled a cigarette with one hand without it looking quite shabby. It can, however, be done, and we have seen it done well by people with yet more practice and a very nimble thumb.

. . .but here's how it's done

The nimble thumb is what it comes down to, really. You will proceed in much the same manner as you would with two hands, only the four fingers, pointing straight up, form the support against which the far side (with the glue strip) rests, and you do the rolling with only the thumb on that hand. What makes it difficult is that the thumb has a limited range of motion on some parts of the cigarette, so those parts will be more difficult to keep even. Just try it and you'll see what we mean. When you've rolled up the cylinder of tobacco as best you can, try to get as much of your thumb as possible to rest parallel along the length of the paper, fold the near edge under the paper as you would with two hands, and then try to roll it up with just the side of your one thumb. Once you get it rolled up, just lick the glue, seal it and light it. Your attempts at this procedure will, at the very least, provide much amusement for onlookers, even if it doesn't produce any usable cigarettes right away. If you can do it, though, it is extremely cool, so it might be worth your while to practice it.

5. USE A CIGARETTE MACHINE INSTEAD

How the machines work

These items can vary widely in price and quality, but the basic idea is the same. They provide a small, tube-shaped chamber into which you can pack tobacco and then seal. Once you have sealed the tobacco into the chamber, you stick a cigarette tube on the end and a mechanism will cause the cylinder of tobacco to be shoved into the tube. They are usually simple. Some are so simple that the mechanism is just a plunger on one end of the tube which you manually shove so that it forces the tobacco into the tube. Others have handles which turn to move the plunger, saving you the brute force exertion and probably extending the life of the machine, as well. The manufacturers will provide you with detailed instructions on how to use your particular machine.

Where to find a machine

Cigarette rolling machines are available at tobacco shops, large drug stores, some department stores, and online. They all work, and you should choose one to suit your price range. The cheapest are all-plastic and require you to slide two parallel parts in opposite directions, causing the plunger to move the tobacco into the tube. These are difficult and they can tend to stick, so only go for them if you don't mind a bit of a hassle and money is an issue. The most expensive are made of wood and metal and have more elaborate methods of getting the tobacco into the tube. Don't waste your money on a machine which tries to look pretty - it's a cigarette machine. The best are ones which don't look too fancy, but are durable and easy-to-use.

6. DO THESE THINGS WHEN USING A CIGARETTE

Place the tobacco evenly

Don't think that just because the machine will do the work of forming the cylinder of tobacco for you that you can just shove tobacco in there haphazardly and expect it to come out perfectly. You must place the tobacco in evenly, so that it will not be bunched up and difficult to smoke. You must also be careful when sealing the chamber, as if there are enough loose ends of tobacco sticking out, they will be caught when the tobacco is forced out of the chamber. This could cause parts of the tobacco to bunch up which could, again, create overly dense sections of tobacco.

Fill in the filter end

Be careful to pack enough tobacco into the end nearest the exit point of the chamber, as this will be the part right next to your made-for-wussies filter. If that part is loosely-packed, it may inhale strangely, it might sag or scrunch in when you inhale, or it could fall apart near the end, which can send burning sparks all over the place. (While this is, as they say, "bitchin'," burning sparks are very bad.) Don't pack it in there so hard that it will smoke like wood. Just ensure that the whole area is filled with tobacco.

Tap down the tobacco

These things aren't perfect, so when the machine has caused the tobacco to be pushed into the tube, hold the machine so that the cigarette's tip will be pointing upward when you remove it from the machine. That way, loosely-packed tobacco at the end will be less likely to spill out. Then, continuing to hold the cigarette upright, tap the cigarette filter gently on a flat surface until the tobacco is more firmly packed. This is likely to leave a small section of tube at the tip of the cigarette free of tobacco. Twist up this loose paper so that it won't light funny and the well-packed tobacco will be kept in place.

Oh, and for all our boasting . . . we use a cigarette machine. Damn, people -- cigarettes'll kill you even faster if you smoke 'em unfiltered.




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