How to make a pound of snuff for $14 A lot of people have been asking for advice on making snuff lately, and after reading about experiments with pipe tobacco etc that have produced mediocre results, I thought I’d share something that has worked very well for me. The end product is pleasant if unremarkable. It is a light brown, almost like a toast, and is easy to take, so it should suit beginners. It has a plain tobacco flavor, slightly sweet with a just a hint of chocolate and vanilla. I’m not a professional by any means, but I have been experimenting, and have come up with a ‘noob-proof’ technique. I have since progressed to more interesting snuffs, but I still take this stuff often. Snuff is cheap and currently easy to obtain, so why would you want to make your own? Well, once you have the equipment, making snuff is even cheaper than buying it. Also, some people just like to experiment. My personal reason though, is fear of ‘snuffmageddon’. When the PACT act came into being, we folks in the States suddenly lost the ability to buy snuff online from domestic sources. Our favorite online vendor, MrSnuff has made this into an almost non-issue for now, because overseas shipping is not affected by the PACT act. Unfortunately, as soon as a journalist finds out about this ‘loophole’ and publishes a story about foreign suppliers peddling fruit-flavor tobacco powder to our children, you can be sure the ‘loophole’ will be closed. My aim is to become as self-sufficient as possible just in case. I’m not stockpiling canned food or ammunition, but I am trying to obtain a healthy amount of snuff. I’m trying to stop smoking using snuff, and the last thing I need is to find out that I am addicted to something that I can’t buy anywhere! Lengthy preamble over. This is intended to be a guide to making a very specific product. It’s not an amazing snuff, just a plain, no-nonsense basic snuff that tastes pleasant enough, is easy to take, and will get the job (nicotine) done. It can be flavored, but that’s a topic unto itself, and is beyond the scope of this tutorial. I lied a little in the title, because the equipment will cost extra. Once you have it though, the snuff will indeed cost around $14 per pound to produce. To give you an idea of how much snuff that is, it is enough to fill a quart mason jar to the top. Materials needed: Harbor Freight rock tumbler. These cost around $40, but HF always has a coupon if you look hard enough. They are usually around 20-25%, so my rock tumbler ended up costing $30. There is also a double canister model for around $10 more. Steel ball bearings. Slingshot ammo is good, but a little expensive. Search ebay and amazon. The above items will make your electric snuff mill, also known as a ‘ball mill’. Don’t mess around with coffee grinders and then complain your home made snuff isn’t like the commercial products. Also, a mortar and pestle will grind snuff, but making a pound of snuff in this way would be a real ordeal! Sieve. I mostly use a large tea strainer because I like a slightly coarse grind. You can also buy stainless steel mesh on ebay for something that I don’t really understand that has to do with weed. I bought a 250 micron mesh, and it’s about right for a toast-type grind. I’d say a 400-500 micron would be about right for a medium grind. Tobacco. We’re going to cheat here and use a commercial smoking-tobacco product. What we need is ‘smooth pipe tobacco’, which is available for people who want to roll their own cigarettes, but don’t want to pay the extra tax. ‘Smooth pipe tobacco’ is in fact just cigarette tobacco. The brand I use is ‘The Good Stuff’ red, but I’m sure any brand would do. It is available from many online retailers for around $14/lb. It is probably also available from smoke shops, but the price will vary widely depending on your state’s tobacco tax laws. The reason that this is ‘cheating’ is because the majority of the processing is done for you. You won’t have to worry about alkalizing, curing etc (unless you use an additive-free tobacco). Salt. You will need around 5% by weight of common non-iodized table salt. It is best to weigh your tobacco when dry in order to accurately determine how much salt you need. Method: Spread your tobacco out thinly on a tray and allow to dry until ‘crispy’, ie it can be crumbled between your fingers. If you live somewhere humid, you may need to use a little artificial heat, but don’t be tempted to use the oven or the microwave. Apart from the risk of overdoing it, you also run the risk of adding unwanted cooking smells to your snuff. When the tobacco has dried out, crumble it up. You can do this with your hands, or you can put it back in the bag and use a rolling pin. Don’t spend too much time on this part, all you need to do is reduce the bulk a little. Weigh your tobacco at this stage, and divide that weight by 20. This is how much salt you need to add. Weigh out and grind this amount of salt, either by hand with a mortar and pestle, or by putting it in the rock tumbler with the steel balls for a few minutes. The salt should be extremely fine, so keep grinding until it is about as fine as talc. Dump a quarter to a third of your tobacco into your rock tumbler, add a quarter to a third of the powdered salt, drop in your steel balls, switch it on, and go do something else for half an hour or so. You should then check the snuff every 15-20 minutes until the grind looks right. Once it’s to your liking, fish the steel balls out with a magnet, dump the snuff out, and put another batch of salt and tobacco in. You should know how long to leave it grinding now, so you won’t have to check as often. Once you have all of your tobacco ground, sieve it. You may find quite a lot of the tobacco isn’t yet fine enough to pass through your sieve. Dry this stuff out a little more, then put it back into the rock tumbler for another grinding. You will end up with hardly any ungrindable waste if you’re patient. Once your tobacco is all ground and sieved, put it into a mason jar and stir/shake/roll it around for a while to get the salt distributed more evenly. Now you can take a pinch! 
This snuff is best used dry, so adding moisture will not be covered here. You may be wondering why I recommend adding the salt dry, as opposed to dissolving it in water and using this to moisten the snuff. I did this for a long time, and it was the cause of most of my failed experiments. I’m not saying that this technique should not be used, it is just too difficult for a novice to get right, and thus not within the scope of this tutorial. So there you go; with an initial investment of $50-60 for the equipment, you can make a pound of snuff for $14 and an hour or so of your time (not including waiting for the snuff to grind). Many snuffers would turn their nose up at such a plain basic snuff when we have so many delightful products available. Despite the fact that I actually use my home made snuff at least 50% of the time I would agree with the above to an extent, which is why I continue to buy snuff. If snuffmageddon happens though, I’ll definitely feel better knowing that I have a few mason jars of snuff safely tucked away in my closet
What weight/quantity/size of ball bearings to you recommend? Is the 3 lb. tumbler from HF the one you use? I, too, would feel better with a few pounds of snuff jarred up, just in case.
Yes, I have the 3lb tumbler. The 6lb dual-drum version would allow you to grind more snuff at a time, but this really wouldn’t be much of an advantage unless you were trying to make a large volume of snuff quickly. You can easily make a pound of snuff in an evening with the 3lb model, and a pound will last a long time even for a heavy snuffer. The 3lb machine is a nice compact machine with a small footprint. In the interests of proving fodder for the out of context quote thread, my balls are 3/8" I actually use a length of chain most of the time, but I didn’t mention it above because it requires some caution, which I’ll explain now. The chain must be uncoated steel. I bought ‘shot-peened’ chain, which is bare steel. You absolutely must avoid chain with any type of coating on it, as the coating will wear off during the grinding process and contaminate your snuff. Avoid painted, powder coated, japanned, and especially zinc plated or galvanized chain. Most silver-colored chain will be zinc coated, so be very careful not to buy that. Chain takes a little longer to grind than balls, but has the advantage that you don’t need to use a magnet to retrieve it. I usually use around two feet of thick chain, and one pack of 3/8" slingshot ammo (steel balls). The smaller the grinding media, the finer the grind you are able to achieve. Before I bought the balls and the chain, I used the sockets from my socket set. These worked extremely well, but it was a pain poking the snuff out of the holes.
Thank you for advising on the size of your balls. 
So medium balls are OK, then. Upon searching, I found a wide variety of ball sizes pictured, both larger and smaller. I will order a tumbler and some balls shortly. Seriously, thanks for the post!
I wouldn’t worry too much about the size of the, er, spheres, it’s really not all that important. I imagine that bigger ones will grind a little faster, but maybe not so fine. Have a look at chain. It works well and it’s cheaper than buying steel balls. It’s also much easier to retrieve from the snuff; you just pull it out. I’m actually looking into getting some ceramic grinding media, but only out of sheer neediness. My current setup works perfectly.
Thanks
I think the Wikipedia ball mill articles says that the smaller the balls, the finer the grind can be. I have a similar ball mill. I bought a packet of Drum a while back and turned that into snuff the other day, with a bit of washing soda and salt. It’s really not bad. It doesn’t taste or look obviously “home made”, although it’s not a particularly exciting snuff compared to many of the professionally made ones that I have. It would make a nice, neutral base if you wanted to scent it. I’ve had less luck with some unscented, English pipe tobaccos, the flavour just isn’t “right”. I may have to work on blending between the two, maybe the pipe tobacco would make a nice spice for the Drum snuff. It is something I should keep on working on, there are so many interesting sub-species of tobacco here in Indonesia, and I have a friend who blends them to make pipe tobaccos, he’d sell them to me at a VERY reasonable cost (maybe around $5 per pound). This is probably a 100% mark up on the “farm door” prices he pays himself. I did spend a weekend once in the island of Lombok, one of Indonesia’s biggest tobacco producing areas, looking for an elusive golden tobacco called “Senang”, grown only in a very small area and used almost exclusively by locals for “high end” home-made cigarettes. Even at the farm door, that one costs about $25 per pound, in an area where agricultural laborers are lucky to get paid three bucks a day.
I have never had the “Balls” to try that method…
I have just received my 3Lbs. Harbor Freight rock tumbler and 36 ceramic balls grade 5 3/32" will be in my mail box (hopefully) by Friday. I bought these balls on ebay for only $11.97 (including shipping costs). I will spend the labor day week-end with my first grinding experiments 
I have 1 cup of organic canadian bright virginia soaked in crown royal and bradley’s maple syrup that is currently sweating in my backyard. My only issue is that I live in a humid area (currently 90F-69% humidity) and I have to figure out how to naturally dry my tobacco to a crisp consistency.
I tried grinding some of my air cured tobacco in a mortar and pestle. The result looked just like Lundy Foot. Took a pinch. It was just like grass clippings. Horrid.
I tried grinding some of my air cured tobacco in a mortar and pestle. The result looked just like Lundy Foot. Took a pinch. It was just like grass clippings. Horrid.
A ball mill does make the difference. I tried blenders and mortar and pestle, and always ended up with a sneezy mess. At least the ball mill produces a good, evenly ground powder.
@dickbastardly So you’re the evil miscreant that outbid me on those balls. :(( =)) Just kidding, congratulations, you’re on your way. BTW, heat and humidity can do wonders for aging tobacco, I’ve got several doing likewise in my shed, covered in cheesecloth, awaiting their turn. For drying I bring the weed into the air conditioned comfort of my man cave, spread it out and put a fan to it, on low speed. Give it a toss and turn once in a while, and soon it will be crispy. The stickiness of the maple syrup might give you some issues if it sticks to your balls (there’s a visual I can live without). As long as it is not overdone you should be okay. Best of luck with your project. It sounds like one hell of a snuff.
@chefdaniel thanx for your precious advice. I hope to not mess up my snuff. If it comes good I would be happy to share some of my snuff with you to try. The sauce was not sugary at all so I hope to not have my balls stuck. Indeed, for the “balls” I am not so sure I can post the name of the vendor according to the rules of this forum but I would be glad to send you his(her) info on a private message. The balls are on “buy it now!” option and they are actually on sale buy 2 get the third for free [It is true! I am not making that up :)] Good night and happy pinch!
@dickbastardly I’d love to try your creation, it sounds great. How can you go wrong? Good whisky, good tobacco. You’re halfway there. See if you can find a fine mesh strainer. It helps to get out any bits and pieces that need a re-milling. If it’s too dry, just put it outside overnight. By morning the humidity will have it nicely moistened. Just don’t overdo it or mold can have a real nice party in your hard earned snuff. Cheers
why do you add the salt? what does it do?
why do you add the salt? what does it do?
I was wondering the same…?
Salt is a flavor/aroma enhancer. Also helps to make it saline so it’s more pleasant on the nose. Yeah these are old threads but apparently that is what is coming up in my searches…
How long do you leave your flour in the ball mill? I wonder if left in for a week or so if you might end up with something like a white? I’ve had mine going with about 100 3/8th balls for about a day now. It’s fine but I want to try for real fine. I need to find cheap sieves, the one I have now allows tiny stems to go through on their side so I end up with some thin long pieces. I’ve noticed those long thin pieces in my two different brands of Madras so think it might be kind of hard to get them out if even some manufacturers leave them in. I was toasting the flour in a pot last night, house smelled so good as long as you were far enough away from the noxious fume vicinity of the area.
@Snuffsahoy - I have found that after about 6 hours of milling, some will be superfine, so with (for example) a 200 mesh/74 micron screen, sift out the finer particles, then keep running it in the mill, sifting every 6-8 hours. This seems to work better than leaving it all in continuously for days.
I am really interested in trying H.F. tumbler for a mill, is anyone still making snuff in 2024 that used one in the past?
How is the rubber, I guess there is no smell or taste added to your hard earned baccy with this method, I mean H.F. rock tumbler into a ball mill?
Thanks for any response, Rob