delta1 wrote:you ever try chopping up the cigar nubs after cutting away the ashy part? or has the flavor been affected by the tarry residue that gathers at the head as you smoke?
Never tried that. I suspect it wouldn't work for the reasons you mention. Anyone who's smoked a cigar to the end and then left its butt in an open ashtray in a closed room overnight knows what happens... the room smells absolutely horrible the next day, and so would your container of "free pipe tobacco" if you put post-smoking tobacco in there, I suspect. You might ruin the whole stash with the stink.
Time may be a factor though (the overnight thing, for example). During the Great Depression (and even today among cheap-ass guys like me), lots of cigar smokers got maximum value out of their cigars by smoking them until they were too short to hold, then immediately putting the still-lit butt into a pipe, ash/cherry side up, push it down in there with a tamper a bit, then smoke it like a pipe bowl. Doing that, you can smoke the ENTIRE cigar. However, you have to do it immediately, not the next day, or it'll be nasty.
The optimal solution here may be:
1. Cut cigar, put clippings in your "free pipe tobacco" sealed container for pipe use arbitrarily later.
2. Smoke cigar as usual until it's too short to hold.
3. Stick the butt, cherry-side-up, in a pipe and smoke the rest immediately.
This seems like the optimal way to be a super ultra tight-ass cheapskate.
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