RAW Hemp Plastic Rolling Machine, 79mm

A 79mm paper is a 1 1/4 paper

Start with the practical answer, because it is what people arrive looking for.

This machine takes 1 1/4 papers. A 1 1/4 measures roughly 78mm long and 48mm wide, which is why a machine built at 79mm fits it with a millimetre to spare. Anything sold as 1 1/4, from any brand, goes in this machine.

The trade description for this product says it is designed to work with 79mm rolling papers. That is accurate and it is circular, because the number on the machine is simply being read back to you. Walk into any shop and ask for 79mm papers and you will get a blank look. Ask for 1 1/4 and you will get exactly the right thing.

Our listing for the 110mm machine sets out the general rule, which is that rolling machines are named for the length of paper they take. This page is about the odder question of why that length has a completely different name once it is printed on a booklet.

Three naming systems, one shelf, and that is the whole problem

Rolling paper sizes are not named inconsistently by accident. They are named by three entirely different systems that grew up separately and now sit side by side.

1 1/4 is a fraction, and crucially it is a fraction of width rather than length. The name means the paper is about a quarter wider than a single wide. It says nothing at all about how long the paper is.

King size is a superlative. It describes nothing measurable, it just means large, and it was borrowed from cigarette marketing.

And 79mm is a measurement in millimetres, of length, which is the system the machines use because a machine has to be built to a physical dimension.

So the category simultaneously names its sizes by a width ratio, an adjective and a length. A 1 1/4 paper and a 79mm machine sound like unrelated products and are made for each other. Nobody sets this out, which is why the confusion survives.

1 1/4 came first, which is the opposite of what most people assume

The instinct is to read single wide as the original and 1 1/4 as a larger variant that came along later. The size guides say it happened the other way round.

1 1/4 is the older standard, associated with Spain, and for a long stretch it was simply what a rolling paper was. Single wide arrived afterwards as the smaller option, using less paper for a smaller roll.

There is a story attached to why, and we pass it on as a story rather than as fact. The trade telling links the arrival of the smaller size to a tobacco duty imposed under James I in 1604, which made a smaller paper the sensible thing to sell. The duty is real history. Whether it is genuinely why single wide exists is a claim we have seen repeated rather than sourced, so read it as folklore that may well be true.

The useful part is not the history. It is that 1 1/4 is the middle size by length and the original by age, which is why so much of the world's rolling paper is still made in it.

RAW's own copy calls 79mm single wide, and it is not

One more size mislabel, and this time it comes from the brand rather than from a distributor.

RAW's description of its automatic rolling box, which sits in the same catalogue as this machine, reads that the original automatic rolling boxes were only available in 79mm single wide. Single wide is roughly 70mm. Seventy-nine millimetres is 1 1/4. The two are a different size with a different name.

Set that next to the finding on our 110mm listing, where the trade description of the 70mm machine calls it a king size machine when king size is 110mm, and you have two separate size errors from two separate sources within one three-product range.

We are not making a point about carelessness. We are making a point about why you should buy a machine by matching it to the papers you actually own rather than to the words in a description. The measurement is the reliable part. The name is not.

What it fits on our shelves

Only one thing we currently stock is a 1 1/4 paper, and it is not a RAW one.

King Palm hemp rolling papers are 1 1/4, so this is the machine for them. They also come with tips in the booklet, which our listing for them goes into.

Every RAW paper we carry is king size and wants the 110mm machine instead: the Connoisseur, the Gary Payton Baller edition and the Organic Hemp Black are all king size, and the Lyrical Lemonade collaboration is king size wide.

So if you are buying RAW papers, this is probably the wrong machine, and we would rather say so than sell you a matched pair that does not match. If you roll 1 1/4 from any brand, it is the right one.

As with the other sizes, this is a hemp plastic composite. Our 110mm listing explains what that phrase does and does not tell you, and it applies equally here.

Who should buy a different size

Anyone rolling RAW papers. Everything RAW we stock is king size, which is the 110mm machine.

Anyone rolling single wide or regular papers. That is the 70mm, whatever its listing says about king size.

Anyone who wants a cone. A hand roller of this type makes a straight cylinder, as our 110mm listing explains in more detail.

Anyone who rolls by hand and is happy doing it. A machine buys consistency, not quality, and 1 1/4 is the size most people find easiest to roll unaided anyway.

And anyone who was going to buy this because 79mm sounded like a middling, sensible number. It is a middling, sensible number. It is also 1 1/4, and if 1 1/4 is not what you use, the number will not help you.