Your cigars look very uniform in shape and size. Do you use a press or just put in the extra effort when rolling them into the binder?
It all depends on how good they look before I put the wrapper on them.
I have two molds I made from some oak planks I had laying around. I used a 1/2" ball end mill for one (~ 32 ring ga.) and a 7/8" ball mill on the other (~50 ring ga.)
It is a total matter of feel when you do the bunching on where to put the small filler in to fill in the voids. If you get the bunching right, rolling the bunch in the binder is much easier. If you are not going for a specific ring gauge (or using a mold), it is also easier to screw up the draw in my experience (since I have not acquired that "feel" for the size I need by rolling dozens every day for years on end.) With a mold, if you don't use enough binder, you get a loose cigar with soft spots and voids and if you use too much, you get a cigar that doesn't draw. I find the "Cuban" method of bunching (entubado) to yield the best results, but it is certainly the most time-consuming. Done properly, however, you can wind up with a cigar that smokes as well as any Cuban, even though the taste may not be exactly the same (since we can't get tobacco or cigars from Cuba). Only half of the excellence of a Cuban cigar is in the tobacco, the other half is in the construction. A cigar with mediocre taste can be compensated for if it smokes well, in my opinion.
The beauty of trying to roll your own is that, if you screw it up, you can unroll it and start all over.
