Antique Cutter Top - Knife Lid Tobacco Tin Survey And Excavation. (image heavy

[ssjones]

One lone cutter-top in my meager tobacciana collection, this recent find, I believe it dates to 1953.

 

[misterlowercase]

Thanks for the pic Al,

that tin was a cool find!
It's cool when they have the tax stamps and we can date them.
I recently saw quite an incredible stash that made me 8O stunned,

the seller has not responded to my questions about shipping to USA so I reckon he ain't interested in the hassle, and he has a few negative feedbacks, but if someone in Europe sees this, it may be easier, there hasn't been many views on these tins so I think they'll go for under market value, they look quite beautiful, most are and I'm sad that I couldn't convince the seller to allow me to bid... :crying:

Have a look:

http://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0&_nkw=Tabak+Dose+30er+Jahre+aus+Army+Best%C3%A4nden&_sacat=0&_from=R40
I'll never forget the time that I found that 60's era cutter-top of BS Va #10 for $35, it looked great 'n and had enamel label art, I very foolishly sold it thinking I wouldn't like it because I thought that it had Lat innit and at the time I didn't like Lat at all, but tastes change and now I love Lat --- it was a hard lesson to learn, exactly how rare it is to pick up a nice cutter-top on the cheap, I've been actively looking and such deals are very very few and far between.

 

[misterlowercase]

Sometimes I'll buy an oddball book because it may actually contain relevant clues to things I'm interested in.
Recently I came across a copy of Cigarettes - Liverpool 5 - the story of the Liverpool branch of British American Tobacco Company Ltd by Jack Jones .
I have a thing for Ogden's, but I didn't really expect too much here in terms of pipe tobacco, and indeed reading through a bit tonight confirms the book is mostly focused on cigarettes as the title suggests, with scant mention of much else, yet chapter 18 revealed a wonderful little tidbit about cutter-tops and yet another reason why perhaps they are usually so freaky good...
...the excerpt:

This might be a convenient moment to describe the heater tester used for all cigarettes and tobacco tins not put through the Thermokept or Tingey cold vacuumising machines.

*note: the 2 machines mentioned above made slightly cheaper to produce tins and were less labor intensive, but resulted in a lower vacuum of 2-3", while the conventional heat processed cutter-top usually had 4-5", but all tins still had to be checked after the sealed fact for "leakers".
These testers were large cylinders 7' long x 3' diameter, fitted with 23 tubes each 3½" diameter which were surrounded with steam heater coils. The cylinder rotated slowly on its axis, making one revolution every 40 seconds. Steam was applied to the coils at 30-35 lbs in² which produced a temperature inside the tubes of about 280°F.
Tins were placed into the tubes as the cylinder rotated pushing preceding tins through the tubes until they fell out down a chute at the other end. At the exit end, the thin tagger plate which had become distended by the heat in the tester was "pricked" with a gramophone needle held in a stick of solder. The heated air inside the tin pushed out and the puncture was immediately soldered. The application of the hot iron burned up most of the air remaining in the tin, leaving a partial vacuum of around 4½ inches.

note: I had always wanted to know why those solder spots were there on the "tagger plates", now I know!
The time taken for a tin of cigarettes to pass through the heater was about 6½ minutes.
For tobaccos, however, the heating feature of the testers was in effect used to extend the processing of the tobacco.
The number of tins fed into each tube and the number of tubes used was varied according to a very carefully calculated formula for each and every brand and packing so that some passed through the heater in 9 minutes whereas others took 22½ minutes.
Some brands, especially the darker flakes or navy cuts were put through a second time after a 48 hour interval so that the total time in the heater was often as much as 50 minutes.
This treatment of tobaccos had been practised since the earliest days and was considered to be an essential part of the processing.It was only abandoned when tobacco packings changed to snap vac or skruseal packings some time after World War 2.

Very informative little extract, that.
Talk about time consuming, labor intensive, and expensive to manufacture!

Wow.
Earlier in the book he talks about the time in 1934 when crimped cigarettes faded from the scene, to be replaced with pasted seams, and goes on to talk of

"...decorated tin with a soldered tagger top. A loose cutter (for opening the tagger) was placed on top of the tagger and a slip cover was placed over this. This slip covered tin was then body wrapped in glascine.
Altogether, quite an elaborate packing most expensive and labour intensive even in those days, just imagine what it would cost to reproduce today."
Interesting stuff.

::

 

[danielplainview]

Those are great! Thanks for posting.