Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust’s Guillotina de Saka Cutter Taking Shape

Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust is working to produce a new cigar cutter with a blade that is replaceable by the user.

The Guillotina de Saka is a single guillotine cutter that has a 420 stainless steel blade inside of a stainless steel exterior case. In an email, Steve Saka, founder of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust, told halfwheel that the cutter features a number of unique aspects, including the fact that the steel blade is designed to be easily replaceable by consumers without having to use any special tools. In addition, the Guillotina de Saka has a different-sized opening on each side of the case; one side is designed to cut for cigars up to 48 ring gauge, while the other is designed for cigars of 50 ring gauge and thicker.

Saka has been developing the Guillotina de Saka with Luigi Lucente, product development engineer at CigarMedics, Inc., which is the company that is producing the cutter. Lucente also designed The Baller, a cigar cutter that combines aspects of both a punch cutter and a v-cutter into one product.

According to Saka, the impetus behind the Guillotina de Saka came from his experience using the Cigar Bris Tool, a single guillotine cutter with a plastic body that was produced for Drew Estate in the 1990s. Saka worked as a Drew Estate executive and partner from 2005-2013.

“I always wish(ed) there was a simple, single-blade guillotine cutter that cut like that cheap one and had a spring for opening – problem with that cutter is there were only 500 of them left from a 90’s production in the world and I could never source more and they break,” said Saka in an email to halfwheel.

Saka told halfwheel that he has no current plans to sell the cutter on a commercial basis due to the fact that the cost would be too high. Instead, cutters from the initial production will be used as contest prizes and “thank you” gifts to select Dunbarton accounts. He has noted that he also made past proclamations about not selling certain cigars because of their high costs, only to then end up selling them.

It’s unclear when the cutters will exit the prototype and development stage and actually end up in the hands of retailers and/or consumers who win them via contests. The cutters were quietly on-hand during TPE 2023 in February and should be on display at the 2023 PCA Convention & Trade Show, which takes place July 8-11 in Las Vegas.