Well, Duh! Zippo Edition

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Oct 7, 2016
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My current Zippo lighter, purchased new about three years or so ago with the pipe chimney, had a horrible evaporation issue. A fill would only last a couple of days. Since I don’t use one a lot, preferring matches, I never bothered to try some of the fixes suggested on this forum and elsewhere. But they are handy devils when I am out and about, and for pipes I somewhat prefer kerosene to butane.

This last week, in cleaning out a drawer, I found a Zippo case with no internal mechanism. What happened to the insert is beyond me. Hadn’t seen the case in over 15 years. But a light bulb went off. I recalled that the insert that had been in that case was tighter than a tick, requiring some effort to remove to fill. I put the pipe chimney insert into the old case, and it was just as tight as the old insert I remembered, which never caused me to complain about evaporation.

I filled the lighter Thursday. Today is Tuesday and the flame is as high as it was then. Problem, I am fairly sure, solved. The new case with the new insert would have evaporated by now with the same minimal use.

Are Zippos intentionally made with a looser fit between the insert and the case these days? Or is it, as I suspect, just a question of two parts made within tolerances that, when placed together, just created an outlier? I suspect the latter.

If you are like me and have smoked something or other for over 50 years, you surely have at least one old Zippo case around somewhere. It might be worth trying different inserts in different cases to see if you can find a combination that will fit tighter and minimize evaporation. This might seem obvious, heck it is obvious, thus the reason for the “Well, duh” in the title. But maybe someone else will find this tip useful.
 
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olkofri

Lifer
Sep 9, 2017
8,033
14,644
The Arm of Orion
Now I wish again I hadn't lost my first zippo: it was a standard one. My pipe zippo does have an evaporation issue. I really don't use it.
 

Casual

Lifer
Oct 3, 2019
2,577
9,420
NL, CA
My nine month old brass armor zippo with the pipe insert lasts a lot longer than I remember my first one lasting a couple decades ago.

I’d bet it’s just tolerances.
 
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iacchus

Lurker
Jan 10, 2019
12
12
MS Gulf Coast
I think you hit the nail on the head with it being a matter of tolerances.
I have one of ten or so that seems to do far better than the rest in this regard.

I've tried the Vaseline trick many have suggested, but found that I prefer just topping it off every two or three days better than dealing with that damnable goo.
 
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