I'm not sure what a tobacco stick is. I attempted some Google research, but it did not clear it up entirely. :bulgy-eyes: Can you enlighten me?
They look very comfortable to hold. :biggrin:
I would also like to know what a tobacco stick is please.
They look very comfortable to hold. :biggrin:
I would also like to know what a tobacco stick is please.
Yes, please, and where can I get some?!
Regards,
Michael
I am also curious as to what a tobacco stick is?
If I'm not mistaken, tobacco sticks were used to hang tobacco out to dry. The sticks laid over the rafters in the barns.
They have been popular in many woodworking projects. including pens and walking sticks.
gordon
What is a tobacco stick?
There may be different versions of them as far as shape, I have not seen the hourglass shape Gregory mentions but he is correct in their usage but to add to the detail:
Here in Kentucky they are simply one inch square sticks about 4ft long sharpened to a blunt point on both ends. As Gregory also noted they can be any of a variety of wood species but Oak and Hickory are fairly dominate here. Back in the day they were made by splitting 4ft sections of timber into strips with an ax or similar device. They had approximately a one inch cross section so they tended to be rough and could be a little on the curvy side. More modern farmers bought them from sawmills or used their own sawmills to cut the timber into one inch squares. In use they were dropped in the field of tobacco between the rows of tobacco about one for 6-8 plants depending on the plants size. The farmer would then pick up a stick and stab it into the ground to make is stand vertically, he would then put a steel spear pointed cone over the top end of the stick. He carried a "tobacco knife" which was basically a tomahawk and used it to cut the tobacco plant at ground level, he would then place the tobacco stalk onto the spear point at about six inches from the cut end a push it over the spear and down to the bottom of the "tobacco stick". When he had about 6-8 stalks of tobacco on the "stick" he would remove the spear point and move to the next stick and repeat the process until the whole field was cut. Then a tractor and wagon(horse and wagon earlier) would come along and men, women, boys, girls(who ever could lift them) would load them onto the wagon. They would then be taken to the tobacco barn where the sticks were used to hang the stalks top down between to rails for a month or "few' of drying. After drying the tobacco leaves would be stripped from the stalk, graded, bundled and taken to market. The sticks would be piled up in the barn to wait until next season. See the attached photo of my Dad, Nathan(left), his cousin Tinnie(middle) and his brother Charles(right) loading a wagon after cutting the tobacco.
I mentioned "farmers own sawmills". This is a pic of the same brothers using an old Case tractor and its PTO to drive a sawmill blade. In this case they are cross cutting not ripping. They are probably cutting 18" lengths of fire wood.
*sigh* ....
I remember working at McDonald's and coming across someone who didn't know how to roll a breakfast burrito until I said to him, "Just roll it like a blunt, man!" .... he was the fastest burrito prep person we had from that day forward, and nobody else knows why.
I missed the relevance of this post.
Very nice. They look great.
Hi JD:
I agree that the profile of these are not seen often... but look like they would be very comfortable to use! NICE!
You do very nice work!
We didn't have to go to Kentucky to learn how, we already knew how to make them. First, start with a mess of rabbit terbaccky....
And nobody comments on 2nd graders learning how to make cigarettes ....
that was so 20th century...now they learn how to make meth
I actually work with a bunch of "not so young people" and they said that they used to get pulled from school, without choice, to go work the tobacco fields.
Appreciate everyone's comments and thanks for looking as well as commenting.
