Photo Gallery: J.C. Newman's Cigar Machines
Nov 4, 2009 |
At 114 years old, J.C. Newman Cigar Co. is the final large cigar company still operating in Tampa, Florida. Inside the company, time stands still, and cigars are made by 60-year-old machines. View the images below for an inside look at this decades-old process, which is still in operation today at J.C. Newman's Ybor City factory. (Photographs by Brad DeCecco)
The Newmans make their cigars in a 1910 factory known as El Reloj for the clock near its peak.
The Cigars are made by machine, using a method that takes a considerable human touch to ensure that the decades-old devices operate properly.
A die cuts tobacco leaves to shape for the rolling process.
Inside the cigars are chopped filler tobacco (the scrap from handmade cigar production at Tabacalera A. Fuente, the company that makes most of Newman’s handmade cigars).
The reinforced floors at J.C. Newman rumble when one of the machines shakes chopped filler tobacco into a triangular scale.
The old devices can make about 11 cigars a minute, slow in the machine-made world.
