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As a new pipe smoker and lifelong nicotine junkie, I find myself with a rather large collection of empty tobacco tins. They're too groovy to just throw away but I don't know what to do with them besides holding the odd paper clip and rubber band.
I know someone has a creative use for these things! Help a brother out! 😂👍
A question that has been vexing pipe smokers for many years. I have boxes full of empty tins. Every few years I throw them out if I can’t find anyone to give them to. But I save them up again hoping the answer to their repurposing will present itself.
I keep all the empty tins and when someone is interested in them for collecting or other purposes like keeping fishing stuff, buttons, or nuts and bolts, I give them away. I keep the ones that are important for any reason. My first tin of Dunhill Standard Mixture Medium, the blend that made me fall in love with Latakia blends, my first tin of Balkan Sobranie Smoking Mixture, that supposed a true revelation for me, a the tin of Estate Express Roundels that caused my periquephobia... All in all a nice collection. Keeping them and give them a second life is an act of respect towards a beautiful object that contained something that has given me wonderful moments. The oldest ones with no warnings are beautiful objects that does not deserve an unworthy ending.
One of these days I´ll photograph the most interesting ones and start a topic with them sharing with you what is behind each one.
I’m a pack-rat. Never throw away anything that might come in handy later. So, interested in ideas, too. 👀
If you have a man cave here's an idea.
From an old article about Tolkien writing the Lord of the Rings:
"J.R.R. Tolkien wrote without an outline using only the thoughts gathered in his head over long hours of smoking his pipe and staring into a fireplace. Sitting at his typewriter, head wreathed in smoke, he pounded out a first draft of the Lord of the Rings mythos, and then discarded it, beginning again from scratch. As the story took form, it left behind a litter of empty blue-painted cans of tobacco.
The tobacco was Capstan Original Navy Cut. Members of his family remember the tins proliferating around the house and being used to store household items.”
I guess he didn’t figure out anything particular to do with them either.
That's a great story! Someone here should write a novel and call it "Lord of the Smoke Rings" or "Prince of the Pipes", Titan of tobacco tins... 😂👍
They hold larger Pike streamers that don't fit into a normal fly box pretty well. They also hold lighters and pipe tools. That said, I am still left with a bit of a surplus.
I regret throwing a bunch away that didn't have tobacco warnings on them.
Manufacturers could offer an online service to download labels without warnings to print at home.
I got the RINNIG plate holder from IKEA to hold tin lids. They hold 9 lids of all common sizes (as you can see on the photo).
I use it to display my top 9 blends. If I find a blend I like more, I add its lid and remove another one from the rack. I got 2 racks so I don't have to be too picky, especially if still undecided. Sets a limit for my collecting, and doesn't look chaotic or cluttered.
After taking notes of the production date of a blend for the cellar, I usually don't keep the bottom part of a tin. However, I do use a few for small odds and ends, or as ashtrays.
I saw a guy on YouTube with the 100g rattray tins that turned them into candles.
Those are good for hold pen and pencils. I gave one of black mallory to my mom. Actually my wife and my mom are the one who end up with most of my empty tins.
Ever since the plain packaging laws came into being here in Canada, the tins are not particularly exciting to keep around, but I’ve started to gift mine to the musicians I work with for their in-ear monitors: because of the seal, and with a silica gel pack or two to absorb moisture, a few have noted that they’re getting longer life/use from theirs by keeping them in my tins. I’ve even had people ask specifically if I could give them one, so it seems I’ve got a bit of a cult starting 😉 lol.
Hello and welcome to the forum!
Plain packaging sounds better than the pictures of corpses and autopsies I remember from years back on cigarette packs in Canada 😃 It’s cool you’ve found a use.
In Spain we still follow the fashion of spoiled organs and various offal. Lately the pics of dying people with wife and kids are on Vogue, but the dying are only men!. I haven´t seen a pic of a dying woman with husband and kids nearby.
I can´t help but wonder about the addictions of those who impose these things. They will have some, but surely unmentionable.
The attempts like this at getting an emotional reaction out of smokers are ridiculous.
I wonder why they aren’t putting pictures of car crashes on new cars, what about booze too? Tobacco had become such the punching bag.
Before such a pictures there were only texts. One day a guy at the tobacconists was given a cigarette box with this warning "Tobacco causes impotence". The guy red it and immediately asked the tobacconist to change that cigarette box for one warning about cancer. Client and tobacconist were friends and were kidding with the complicity of the rest of the clients of the tobacco shop. This is the kind of respect and fear these warnings inspire among smokers.
They should post pictures of the dying on labels for the experimental vaccine they keep pushing non stop on the unsuspecting public! Oh no! Did I just post something anti Big pharma? Hahaha Yep! I'll be banned in 3..2..1..
I found a website with 3d model to be printed that seems a good idea for empty tins. (Square tin)
https://www.printables.com/model/608978-tobacco-tin-organiser
So it's the age old answer "you put your weed in it" 😂
There are some cool little kits people make out of tins- survival and first aid kits. Often Altoids. But pipe tins would be cooler.
I used to use Germaine's tins to carry my stuff your own smokes in when I still smoked cigarettes.
I also bet you could make a cool little backpacking stove out of the right tins. Again cooler than cat food.
I'll ask a friend who has a 3d printer to make this and i'll be back with the result to show you all if it works or not.
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