If you find it hard to cap small spray vials…

I’ve been testing 2-3 ml spray vials from various manufacturers, and some of the push-on cap types are very hard to assemble because they are meant to be put on by machine, not by hand. It takes a lot of force to get the caps on. If you have lousy wrists like I do, you may not be able to do it. Even people with strong wrists can struggle with it. When I saw a tweet on twitter today by flittersniffer pleading for help with these vials, I thought it was worth a post because this tip might help someone.

Flittersniffer wrote a humorous blog description of her trials with these vials. I went through the same thing but recently found a solution. I can get the caps on if I use a small hand vice as shown in the above photo. The vial won’t squirt if you apply the force very slowly and smoothly without any release and without letting any air into the vial. You wouldn’t want to do thousands this way, but if you are doing a reasonable number it might help you. The tool only costs around $12-15, and you can even find them on Amazon.

As for me, I’m also considering a type that has glass vials but screw-on caps rather than push-on. I’m looking for vials that don’t leak, spray well, and are not too hard to assemble. I’m still deciding which to pick. Meantime, I thought this discovery might be worth mentioning for those who do some decanting. 🙂 Other people may have good suggestions too and might leave them here and/or on flittersniffer’s post.

Edited to add: the kind of vial shown in the photo is actually one that I’ve learned how to assemble just by hand without a vice or any “pusher” item. They take some practice but once you figure out a method they work pretty well. But there are other kinds I still can’t do without the vice trick.