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Monday, May 9, 2016

Esoteric Tools

Confession: I smoke cigars in the Growlery. 

As I sit sucking a roll of smoldering weeds do I think heavy thoughts? Well, maybe sometimes, but mostly it's just reading, admiring the lines of an old bicycle, designing gardens, or admiring objects and wondering, "How the hell did they make that?". Process. I made my living designing "stuff". Sometimes it was from materials like plastic or aluminum, but the overwhelming majority was steel. The president of our company accurately referred to us as "just a bunch of metal benders". 

These are cigar tools, a lighter and a multi-tool for cutting, trimming and poking cigars. Both are made in Italy by Xikar. The lighter is graceful, feels good in the hand, and is efficient - squeeze it and a flame leaps out of a small hole in the end. The cutter is 3/16" x 2" folded. As an old metal bender I recognize a nice piece of design and amazing manufacturing skills.















Tobacco cutters?





















Lit 'em up! - Gunnar B.

3 comments:

Margadant said...

I understand your appreciation for this little gem. The scales fell from my eyes the first time I toted a multi-denaro cigar up to the smoke shop counter and the proprietor efficiently clipped its end and returned it to me with a small box of wooden matches to take to a large, convenient easy chair. It was like I was suddenly looking over a high fence into Cigar Nirvana -- glancing at the paltry amount of change on the counter, it was a place I knew I won't be visiting often. I look forward to journeying to the Growlery for another peek.

Gunnar Berg said...

Yep. The home of cheap....ahhh, value priced cigars.

Anonymous said...

Hey! What happened to Fausto and Gino?
Lee