Hi all. Recently made a little purchase on Ebay - three old little blue tins of JHW snuff. SP No1, Wallflower, and Medicated no.99. What I really wanted was the little booklet complete with covering letter from JHW that came with them started with ‘Dear new snuff taker’ I imagine someone has sent off for samples and judging by the amount left (they are all almost full) wasn’t too keen on the ‘snuff sensation’ as described in the booklet. I suspect the snuffs (of course all useless by now) are from the 70s or 80s at the latest. The address is given as Westbrook Mill, Sheffield and I think they left there in the late 80s. None of the tins carry a health warning which must be a clue to their age. Does anyone know when the health warnings came about on snuff? I am a new member to this fab site (been lurking for months, nay a year or two!) and thought I would share this and just say hello.
G’Day Hoffwell and welcome! I am a big fan of JHW and would also be interested in when they started putting the health warnings on the tins. Probably late 80’s but one of the boffins here will know for sure.
Tobacco never rots ,it can grow mold.You technically can use old snuff. let air out for several days then it can be scented or hydrated to your liking.Grant it you can never restore the original scent. But if you like the base tobacco there is one starting point. A short while back MrSnuff was selling some 90 year old snuff. I missed out because lack of finance’s at the time.
I remember buying a presentation box of the little tins - when they were tins and not ‘plastics’ - back in the seventies, when J&H did more secnts than now. I can’t remember if it had a leaflet enclosed, though. Some of them might still be around somewhere…
I bought 7 small tins, with plastic bottoms, of JHW # 1 SP on ebay recently from someone in England. They were still wrapped in plastic, rust on the inside of lid. No scent other than iron oxide. Like B Shaman recommended, I aired one out for a few days, in a differnt container. Then put a q tip soaked in bergamot oil, another soaked in distilled water, closed it all up and waited for three days.What I wound with is actually kind of a strongly scented SP, without the complexity of a professionally crafted product. The base tobacco is nice. It could be a less scented however. With the remaining tins, I am going to make mini-batches, each with a slightly different amount of essences. I have bergamot, peppermint, vetiver, citronella, and clove oils. I will try bergamot, peppermint and citronella. I already have scented some of the RedSeal, huge jar snuff with clove oil, which made it very good. Be careful with the essential oils, a little goes a long way and its easy to overpower a batch, as I have found by experience. But to the topic… try to re-scent and rehydrate those old tins. They will yield something good if you do it right.