There are three components of the cigar — filler, binder, and wrapper. 

 For the manufacture of some cigars, imported leaf is used for part or all of 

 the cigar. Presently, less than one-half of the cigar leaf used in the in- 

 dustry is domestically grown. 



Reconstituted tobacco sheet. "Reconstituted sheet" is now used as a 

 substitute for natural cigar binders on most cigars, and an increasing per- 

 centage also have reconsituted wrappers. Those with reconstituted wrappers 

 often do not have the inner binder. 



In manufacturing this material, tobacco is ground into a fine powder, 

 mixed v;ith a cohesive agent, and rolled into a flat sheet of uniform thick- 

 ness and quality. The moisture is controlled throughout all the various 

 stages of the production, and the material is so made that not only have the 

 taste and aroma of the natural leaf been preserved, but the burning quality 

 has been improved. 



The use of reconstituted sheet results in substantial savings both in 

 leaf and labor costs. Natural leaf binders have to be nearly perfect, and are 

 therefore costly. When these are used, they are first stemmed, and the stems 

 discarded. Generally each half of a stemmed leaf will yield two to three 

 binder nieces and the trimmings go largely into the manufacture of loose-leaf 

 chewing, a lower value outlet. In tobacco sheet, the entire binder leaves are 

 used, even though they may be broken or damaged. There is no waste or trim- 

 mings in cutting the binder, as it is cut to a parallelogram shape, which uses 

 all the sheet. 



The savings in labor cost, as well as in leaf cost, is also an important 

 factor in the development of this processed sheet for cigar-binder purposes. 

 Natural binders must be hand-fed into the cigar-making machine hut the sheet 

 is fed automatically from a spool, thus reducing the workers required from 2 

 to 1 on most machines (fig. 42). 



The use of sheet as wrappers is not as widespread as binders, but the 

 potential saving in this area is also considerable, both in leaf and labor 

 costs. 



The filler tobacco is first fed into a hopper of the producing machine 

 to make the core or center part of the cigar. This filler may be made of long 

 fragments of leaves, the length of the cigar, or of short-shredded nieces 

 bunched together. Most cigars are made with short filler. The filler portion 

 is blended and shaped, and the binder, either natural or sheet, cut and 

 wrapped around it. Next, the wrapper is cut and applied and the end sealed. 

 Machines can turn out standard size cigars at the rate of 800 to 900 per hour. 

 More recently new high-speed machines have been developed which, using re- 

 constituted binder and wrapper, are capable of producing 700 or more 

 cigarillo-size cigars per minute. 



SI 



