well.. i'll trust you on the ether thing. for some reason i've heard of people injecting crack, so maybe it's slightly soluble in water; mixing with ether would pull more of the freebase trapped in the water layer into the ether layer. btw, i can't think of any solution more scary than crack in diethyl ether.
now, at first i didn't think the cooking method was possible, but i conveniently had an ex-crackhead with me who said it definitely works. and basically gave the same description of the process. it's also fairly obvious you know what you're doing.
resublimation is a process by which chemicals may be purified by heating them slightly, to a temperature well below their melting point. certain compounds, evidently including coke, are quite volatile; that is, in the solid form, molecules easily leave the surface of the crystal to form a vapor. such volatile compounds *may* be unstable at their boiling point, but they *can* be purified by resublimation. essentially, the crystals are heated slightly on a glass dish with a second glass dish placed on top. the compound volatilizes--basically, evaporates at a low temperature, like water does if you leave it standing--and the vapor rises to the upper glass dish, where it sublimes (the name for a gas <--> solid transition), forming crystals of the pure compound.
so, in this cooking method, the slow heating that results in charring the cigarette could do the same thing. the large crystals of *compound* may volatilize, filling the cigarette with vapor at a temperature well below the decomposition point. slow heating at a low temperature is essential for this. the vapor, of course, would cool and sublime, leaving tiny crystals of *compound* saturating the paper and tobacco. then you light the cigarette, and probably lose most of the stuff at the tip.. but smoking it would have the effect of heating the area near the heater, and drawing hot smoke through the whole thing. as this happens, the crystals may simply volatilize again, allowing you to suck this vapor into your lungs (it'd be kept as a vapor by the smoke) where it would be absorbed across the mucous membrane. this seems to be a fairly logical explanation.. the only one i can think of that doesn't involve some magic and unlikely way of breaking the bonds in the acid salt. in other words, this method still uses the hydrochloride salt, it just allows it to vaporize below the usual boiling point and the point of decomposition.
last thing... on the subject of real men vs. pussies... this is exactly how i feel about the happy lil raverkiddies who do things like *flavor* k (which is a 'harder' drug than youd think when done properly). or, as the k put it:
fuck the ravers who snort the k and dance
they are turned back from the black gates of onyx and silver
running, running, running
the k-liquid is the flight of the condemned soul