Ok, guys, I got a new one for you. Probably just a twilight zone episode and there's no explanation and it will never happen again - but here's what happened: I get another Carlos Torano Nic (b/c the last one I had was so good), and I carefully light it, start puffing - has decent draw and a fair amount of smoke, but after a few puffs - I draw in, but don't get any smoke. Then the smoke comes back and for the remainder of the gar - every 4 or 5 puffs will yield no smoke. The draw is great - I suck in air, but there's no smoke there! I carefully checked the wrapper and there were absolutely zero holes or cracks in it. Figure that one out!

Did you tunnel in the middle of the stick?

Sounds like tunneling to me

Major Pain

tunneling??? what's that???

The most noticable kind is when there is an uneven burn you notice on the outside of the cigar... also called canoeing. Sometimes, when the stick is dryer in the middle, it will burn faster than the outside. If you look at the foot, you will see a big hole in the middle of the cherry. The stick may get hot almost an inch away from where the cherry is. It can also result in no smoke on a few puffs... very annoying.

Had an IT Fire tunnel a bit on me the other day. It burned ok on second relight, but tended to burn out. I suspect the heavier wrapper/binder relative to filler as much as humidity differential

But what to I know

I despise canoeing, btw

well, I didn't look too closely at it, but the ash and cherry all looked perfect. the ash was a solid white, held for over an inch and when I tapped it off, the cherry was perfect... maybe there was some small tunneling I didn't notice....

A pinhole would make a difference.

What puzzles is intermittent nature.

Suspect some sort of air leak that periodically self corrects, then is a problem [repeating]