New Top-O-Matic Cigarette Rolling Machine

I just bought this Top-O-Matic machine and rolled my first pack of cigarettes this morning. It's easy to use with almost no learning curve and it works great. As expensive as cigarettes have become, don't know why I never looked into rolling my own before now.Obviously, the main reason why most people consider RYO cigarettes is the cost savings and it is significant, but there are other benefits as well. First, you can get much higher quality tobacco with no additives or chemicals and minimal processing. There are numerous brands and varieties of tobacco available and with a little experimentation, you can even create your own blends by mixing different tobaccos to get the exact flavor you like.This machine is designed to work with either king or 100 mm filter tubes, so all you have to do is select the size you prefer, insert a tube onto the fitting on the side of the machine, load the chamber with tobacco, then pull down on the lever to automatically roll the cigarette and eject it from the machine. Switching sizes is fast and easy. There's a small plate with a thumb screw which is inserted for king sized cigarettes. To make 100's, you simply loosen the thumb screw and remove the plate.There are several YouTube videos demonstrating use of the machine. I watched a couple of them before starting my first pack and had no problem at all using the machine. I had a couple of concerns that turned out to be unfounded. First, I wasn't certain how difficult it would be to pack the tobacco correctly so the cigarette didn't have gaps or voids, or conversely over-packed which makes it difficult to pull down the lever to roll the cigarette and also makes the cigarette hard to draw properly. It turns out that packing the tobacco to the correct density is almost instinctive. Tobacco is fairly springy, so unless you really apply excess force it's hard to over-pack it. I had a couple of cigarettes in my first batch with small voids in them. due to under-packing. Initially, when I tried to tamp them down to fill the voids, it didn't work but all I had to do was to roll the cigarettes gently between my fingers to loosen the tobacco slightly, then tap the filter end against the table a few times to tamp the tobacco properly, ending up with a little left over paper at the open end which burned away immediately when I lit the cigarettes.After some internet research, I decided to buy a couple of different tobaccos to start out with. The ones I chose were both made by D&R tobacco, which seemed to have the highest ratings from RYO smokers. I bought mine online from Nationalcigar.com. The blends I chose were their Windsail Platinum and their Vengeur Platinum, both priced at $24.50 per pound. There are much cheaper tobaccos available but even the best tobaccos are so much cheaper than buying cigarettes by the pack that I decided to start out with one of the top rated brands. I also bought three different filter tubes to see which ones I liked - Zen Blue 100's and Zen Blue Kings, and D&R Windsail Elite 100's. I haven't tried the kings yet, but both of the two 100's are fine. I have a slight preference for the Windsails. Although the filters are the same length, the Windsail filters are noticeably denser, taking a little more effort to draw. They seem to filter better and produce a smoother, milder taste.Almost all RYO tobacco is sold as "pipe" tobacco to avoid the higher taxes on cigarette tobacco but work fine for rolling cigarettes in the Top-O-Matic machines. In fact, one of the YouTube reviewers commented that "cigarette" cut tobaccos don't work as well in the machine as pipe cut tobacco. At any rate, I love the Windsail Platinum, coupled with the Windsail 100 mm filter tubes. It produces a light, smooth smoke with no harshness but plenty of flavor, much better than any of the store-bought cigarettes I've smoked. I generally smoke Marlboro Light 100's and these are better in my opinion than the Marlboros, at less than 1/3 the cost.For reference, you should get about 2 1/2 cartons of kings per pound of tobacco or about 2 cartons of 100's. Thus, at $24.50 a pound, the tobacco cost works out to about $10 to $15 per carton, depending on which tobacco you buy and whether you're rolling kings or 100's. The filter tubes will cost an additional $2.50 to $4.00 per carton, so your total cost per carton will run no more than $15 to $20 per carton, perhaps less. It took me about 1/2 hour to roll my first pack because I was still figuring out how to use the machine. I think with practice I should be able to roll a full carton in about the same amount of time.UPDATE: 1/11/17 - I've been using the machine for several days and have made a couple of cartons of cigarettes (about 15 packs, actually) for myself and friends. Although I'm not an expert yet, I've learned a few things that may be helpful to other newbies.First, the process can be a little messy and clean up is much easier if you use some sort of tray. I found that a regular cookie sheet, which I already had on hand, works great. I use a small brush to clean the machine after each use.I've found that I prefer using the 100 mm filter tubes, even if I'm rolling kings, as further explained below. The Zen Blue 100's are cheaper than the Windsail Elite 100's and both are fine. One thing that bothered me at first is that if you pack the tube fully, you end up with excess tobacco extending out from the open end of the cigarette, which will either fall out and make a mess or, even worse, fall out after lighting it and burn your clothes, etc. The easy solution is to pinch out the excess with your fingers or cut off the excess with scissors, then tamp the cigarette by tapping the filter against a tabletop. However, I accidentally found a much easier way to solve the problem. What happened is that I'd been making king-sized cigarettes and switched to 100's but forgot to remove the sizing plate, so I was using 100 mm tubes with the machine set for making kings. The tobacco almost fills the tube but never overflows from the open end. This has now become my standard way of rolling my cigarettes. The 100 mm tubes are more expensive but are still cheap so I don't mind. Also, I've found that my 100's burn almost twice as long as packaged 100's, so I usually only smoke 1/2 a cigarette at a time. I've filled an ashtray with clean cat litter and it works great for extinguishing a cigarette without crushing the end so it's easy to re-light and smoke the remaining half later.Of the two D&R tobacco's I've purchased, I prefer the Vengeur Platinum. It seems to have a richer flavor than Windsail Platinum but is still very smooth and mild. I may try some other tobaccos and filter tubes in the future but I'm very satisfied with my initial choice and may not even try others. My cost is working out to about $13 per carton using a premium tobacco and 100 mm filter tubes, including shipping. If low cost was my primary objective, I could buy "value-priced" tobacco and king size filter tubes and bring the cost down to well under $10 per carton.

I thought this machine was amzing for making cigarettes! It's super easy to use, reliable and sturdy. The only thing that I will say is make sure to not get too much fine or damp tobacco all at once as it will jam up. This isn't any fault of the machine, this even happens with electronic machines as well. It can easily be solved by just taking the tube of the syringe and expelling the jammed tobbaco. Overall, the value, quality and warranty make this Top-O-Matic Machine a 10/10!

Before I begin, to answer anyone's question, this injects both kings and 100's, all you do is take a plate off the back of the tobacco area if you're injecting 100's, otherwise no extra prep is required.I bought this to replace an electric injector that was really a house/yard fire waiting to happen. It arrived today and a few things:1. Strangely, it didn't come in a shipping box, the shipping sticker was just affixed to the retail box. I need to bring this up because if you, like me, have porch pirates to worry about, the box is bright yellow and clearly shows the units picture, I can imagine that'd be as prime a target for a porch pirate as bloody steak is to a shark. I strongly suggest you arrange to be home the day it's supposed to arrive as you might find you have porch pirates when before you had none.2. As this is a manual loader, your prep for use should include a placemat or something to catch the loose tobacco, otherwise enjoy the rustic tobacco-everywhere look. I see this elsewhere as a complaint, not to me, it's still a ton less messy that a hand injector.Now, with that out of the way, lets get onto the review:Operation is straightforward and fast, all you do is put the tobacco in, put the tube on the end, give it a good crank and you've got yourself a well-injected smoke. The unit is about as big as you'd expect, but not too big. The main body is cast metal, the mechanisms aren't, this isn't a bad thing. Of the whole unit there were only 3 things I noted that weren't metal. The tube clamp has a rubber tip, the ram unit that pushes the blade forward is made of some sort of plastic, and the handle to the crank seems to be a hard plastic... that's it, everything else is metal, it doesn't just FEEL sturdy, it is verifiably sturdy and it's heavy enough to ease the amount of strength needed to crank the handy leading to less over-all strain compared to a hand injector.I've injected 20 smokes so far and can attest to its consistent operation only having 2 tube casualties due to my improper distribution of tobacco.When the smoke is made, the next thing to rate this on (probably the last thing too... I mean, there's really not much to it in all the best of ways) is the quality of the smoke.The unit consistently packs the tubes just firm enough to provide a strong draw, but not too strong. Of the 20 I've successfully injected, each one hasn't contained loose spots, from the tip to the butt the tobacco is pushed in proper leading to no cherry fall that I've encountered.I can't recommend this unit enough, especially just having bought it to replace an electric injector that couldn't properly pack a smoke leading to embers flying all around and many burns being endured. It's good for the price and rolling or injecting your own smokes, the price of admission will be paid back in short order unless you buy high-end tobacco and high-end tubes I guess. Due to how sturdy it is I can see this being put to use for years to come.Also, I figure there's probably someone itching to ask about its weed compatibility... I don't smoke it yet (waiting to get my medical marijuana card) but I don't think it'd be a good idea, rolling/pipe tobacco is typically drier, I could see the stickyness of pot gunking up the mechanism which, in turn, would require regular maintenance including scrubbing down the chamber, the sharp tobacco blade and would be more hassle than its worth, use a bowl, roll one or use something you don't care if you have to throw away.