Drat and double drat! Last night I dropped my new Patrick Collins Snuffbox. There was no visible damage thankfully, but today the lid will not stay on. It was nice and tight before, now it just slides off on its own. This is devastating as it was the perfect pocket box! Is there anything I can do to make it tight again? Please help!
Xander, you must listened carefully now!!! The box can’t be broken. I guess what happened is, when it hit the floor, all lose snuff the might have been in the sliding channels, came adrift. What I did was to apply a SMALL amount of super glue to the lid’s edges. Now, if you do this, you must let it DRY completely, at least 12 hours. Otherwise you might glue your box’s lid for ever and ever and ever! If you apply to much glue, you can always sand it off to fit. It worked for me. Cheers Pieter
I have also found that rubbing some wax like from a candle or something. I have a small bar of wax I use for throwing darts that I use. Seems to help some, building up the difference & making it a little more ‘gummy’.
Sometimes the lid on mine is snug, sometimes loose. I think the humidity is part of it.
Thanks everybody, I will try some of the ideas. I thought about humidity, but its only today that I’ve had the trouble. I might take it into the bathroom and have a hot shower. Only then, it will dry out again and the problem will return. Pieter, I don’t think any snuff was making it tight, since it was tight before I ever had any snuff in it. I have a block of beeswax here. I will try that first. If it fails I will do Pieter’s glue trick.
If you keep a moist snuff in there it will be tighter than if you have a dry snuff.
Hmm, well I had a snuff in there and it dried out. I took the snuff out to rehydrate it, and it was just before I put the snuff back in that I dropped it. So its the same snuff, but moister now.
let it sit overnight with a moist snuff inside and see what happens?
If there’s a problem with your box the first thing I would suggest before attempting any adjustments is to leave it empty and let it acclimate to normal room temp and humidity for a few days. It will probably return to it’s previous condition. Only try wax if the box is extremely hard to open and use caution because if it becomes too slippery I don’t know how you would remove the wax. For a lid that is too slippery Pieter’s glue method seems plausible but I’ve never tried that. Again, only try adjustments if you’re sure it’s needed after letting the empty box have time to rebound. Getting these lids to slide nicely is an exacting science. All these different woods have different characteristics and will react to temp/humidity differently. As far as humidity and moist snuff goes I’m not sure which way it works. My brain wants to say that a moist snuff would cause the wood to swell. But recently I put a moist snuff (I rarely use moist snuff and never carried any in a snuffbox) in a mahogany box that I’ve carried for almost a year on a daily basis. A few hours later the lid was real loose and looked warped. I was shocked that something had sudddenly gone wrong with my trusty snuffbox. The snuff dried out quickly and ended up being discarded the next day. I switched to a different snuffbox but noticed a few days later that the mahogany box had returned back to normal and now shows no signs of the occurence. Weird but true. When it comes down to it wood snuffboxes aren’t really a good choice for moist snuffs. The box steals the moisture from the snuff and in this case the box may be adversely effected by the snuff. My guess would be that the padauk and teak, which are high in natural oils, would be best for moist snuffs but I haven’t experimented with that yet so it’s just a guess. If you dropped your snuffbox and it cracked it would effect the slide action of your box but if you’re looking closely I’m sure you’d spot the cracks.
Ok Patrick, thank you. It was perfect when you sent it, and it was beutifully tight until yesterday. I just now examined it very carefully for cracks, I found none. I saw a little nick on the bottom and one in the inlay on the lid. Either could have come from the drop. These are not anything significant though. I will do as you say and leave it alone for a few days. I don’t think the weather shifted that much to change the humidity level, and also the box has not been out of the house. This wood was canary, if that means anything. The snuff I had in it was fairly dry. I took the snuff out to rehydrate it (not too much as it was supposed to be a little dry) and the snuff box sat out on the counter while the snuff was getting hydrated. Then I dropped the box, then I put the snuff back in, and didn’t blink an eye. It wasn’t until today (or yesterday now) that I noticed how loose it had gotten. Subsequently I blamed the change on my dropping accident. Perhaps that the drop didn’t really effect it after all? I can’t see how the change in hydration of the very same snuff could have effected it, since the change is so drastic. I don’t see any warping, so maybe it is the atmospheric humidity. I’m really just guessing here. On a related but separate topic, you had mentioned that there would be some new boxes available soon. Any updates, or are they all sold already?
I have four of Patrick’s, one I use for my McCrystal’s Clove and each time I refill it the lid loosens for about a day. I don’t think by dropping it you did it any harm.
Yeah, it seems to have tightend back up again. Go figure. Patrick has some new ones out now, whoo hoo!
I did pieter’s glue method on my snuffbox because the lid was so loose it would slide off on it’s own if the snuffbox wasn’t held flat (not good news for my pocket). It worked real good. My lid is now nice and snug and makes for a great pocket pal. 100% better, thanks pieter.