After most of 4 years of snuff taking I have finally learned to pinch. I have mostly been using the back of the hand method, and it works great but is a real pain in the car or windy conditions. I tried short sharp sniffs, long snorts, tried varying the distance between my nose and fingers, nothing worked well. I got it to far into my nose, down my throat, a few times I swear I could feel it in my ear canals. I tried taking a deep breath and holding it, literally every single suggestion on this site on how to pinch I tried, except one. Only because I didn’t understand how it worked. Roderick has said repeatedly, the key is almost to “will” the pinch into your nose. I didn’t get it. Until today at the gas station. I placed the pinch at the front of my nostril and thought about sniffing. I felt a slight burn where it should be, not in my throat or behind my eyes. I looked at my fingers and most of the pinch was gone and not showing up on my shirt. I have been sitting here for the last couple of hours snuffing Society with no pain and no tears. I’m overjoyed. I don’t know if this will help anyone else or add to the collective wisdom of the forum, but I had to share that I’ve finally figured it the **** out! Yay me!

Congrats!! I hope to be there someday as well!! I am convinced that my nose is defective…but I haven’t hit 4 years of using yet, so maybe there is still hope! I am still a faithful automatic box user with the occasional ‘real’ pinch, when I am in a sadistic mood. Lol

One of the worst things that happened to my snuffing technique was reading how to properly pinch and snuff. Before that I just did and was working fine. Finaly have gone back to just doing it which seems to work wonders. Odd.

@ Micheltn, glad I could help. I think.

I’m still pretty new to the hobby (or should that be ‘the habit’?), but I find that the required technique for pinching varies from product to product. SP-type snuffs end up in my lungs if I sniff too hard, while coarser/moister mixtures do not.

Its like “The Secret” for snuffers.

Maybe we need a better way to explain “The Secret” for noobs. It makes total sense now that I figured it out, but before it just didn’t add up, ya know?

@brigstowe it’s a hobby when you’re trying new snuffs and induldging in the aromas and joy of it. When you’ve run low and are waiting for your next order it’s a habit. I guess I think it’s a little of both. Yeah we are addicted to nicotine unlike smokers some smokers we enjoy more then the fix. It’s a habit if you do it everyday and life sucks when you don’t (which yeah for some people that’s golf or their favorite candy), it’s a hobby when you agonize over the unimportant fine details, and care about acting like each snuff is a Pokemon (I don’t know how popular that still is, it’s a card game that involves catching diffrent monster well for some snuff is a game of catching diffrent snuffs.). So yeah it’s both like a lot of other things people call hobbies.

Here is another one what’s the diffrence between a habit and a hobby? A hobby is considered eccentric and a habit is considered immoral to some.

@bob In that case, I guess snuff is definitely a hobby

you can live without it on a daily basis but if it disappeared you’d be sad about it.

I’ve never cared for sticking my fingers into my snuffbox. Too many skin oils to contaminate the snuff don’cha know… I prefer the boxcar method myself. Then again… I take fairly large pinches.

boxcar method?

It is a habit if you snuff one snuff predominantly. I order Navy Plain by the case and and use other snuffs as a fill in when I feel the need for a change. That, my friends, is a habit. I think it was always a habit for me. I started years ago using SG Menthol and over the years have tried hundreds of snuffs, but most of them never got finished. I just go back to my standards.

Howdy Bob! Boxcar method: Wrap your index finger around the tip of your thumb (same hand.) If you have bent the end joint of your thumb a bit this will form a nice protected recepticle on your thumbnail. Tap as much snuff as you care to onto your thumbnail and sniff. This is a wonderful way to keep body oils and sweat out of whatever is in your snuffbox. It is especially useful if you care to take a pinch when your hands are dirty. Instead of dipping into a snuffbox, I slide open the top a bit and tap the snuff out onto my thumbnail. I use flip top snuff containers (President, Packards Club, etc.) or wood snuffboxes with sliding covers. It allows you to take a larger pinch and the index finger wrapped around the end of your thumb allows you to use the method (with practice) in the wind. BTW: If you are new at using this method and have any old President or Packards Club dispensers, you can pry them open and refill them with your favorite.

I’ve used that method on more then a few occasions. Didn’t know it was boxcaring.

Packards Club dispensers are cool because you can snuff directly out/off of them.