Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

I tried to pack up a bunch of food last night and was using the pails and gamma seals I got from usplastics.com. The ring of the gamma seal doesn't fit over the bucket unless I bend and maneuver it on. When I finally got one hammered down it creaks when you push on it, like its not secured all the way down. I'm not sure if it has an airtight seal but it probably does. Anyway since I didn't want to waste my gamma seals I decided to just use regular lids instead. Well when I hammered on a regular lid to the next bucket you could tell the size was a little off because the shape of the lid was distorted and buckled up in the middle.

When I compared the opening of these pails to other ones I got elswhere the problem seems to be that the buckets are not perfectly round. The have a slight oval shape to them and their circumfrence is just a tad too small. I guess its a defect. The only problem is I have about 20 of them and hundreds of pounds of wheat sitting around that needs packed. :banghead:

I guess I am going to contact the company and see if I can return them, but I wanted to check here first to see if this is something I sholdn't worry about. I mean I can get the lids on, but I dont trust them for longterm storage without mylar because I'm afraid the seal might become comprimised over time. Has anyone had problems with lids and gamma seal rings fitting thier food grade buckets?

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

Did they send you the regular lids with them? use those, I don't trust gamma lids without mylar liners...My 2 Cents

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

I have had no problem with them, but I don't store long term in gammas. I use pour spout lids from USPlastics instead. The gammas I use for the current use items....so I can't speak to the long term aspects of using gammas for LT storage.

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

I don't use gamma seals for long-term storage, either. Somewhere I read that they aren't as airtight as the regular plastic ones over a long period of time. I just use them on buckets that are currently in use.

I did have problems with the regular lids on the last batch of buckets I packed, back in December. It was a struggle to get the lids on as, like you said, we had to kind of bend and maneuver them, then hammer them on. I threw extra oxygen absorbers in the buckets and left one of the buckets up in the kitchen so I can keep an eye on the seal. The top is still sucked down on it 3 months later. So far, so good...

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

I prefer the gasket sealed non-gamma lids. You still must slot them to remove, but give a much better air tight seal.

Use the gamma AFTER you have opened your mylar pouch and are using that particular bucket of food.

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

I bought a few of those Gamma seal lids back before Y2K, we then vacuumed wheat, rice, beans and other stuff in them and sealed them in the buckets. Some of the lids do not fit right on all buckets as we found out, so we used regular lids on those and the Gamma's on the buckets we accessed the most. Over priced and not worth it is my opinion, get regular lids and save your money.

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

Today I packed 200lbs of wheat, 50lbs of rice and 25lbs of oats into a 30 (150lbs) and 20 (75lbs) gallon metal trash cans. I left the grains in their original packaging and lined the trash cans with a heavy duty plastic bag and used twist ties to close up the bags...put a bungee over the lid. I hope this will work for a few years.

Metal trash cans with plastic bag liners seems like a good way to put up large quantities fast. This may not be good long term, but it ought to work for a good while.

Metal 55 gallon barrels with tight fitting lids would probably be better, but these trash can lids fit real snug.

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

When gamma seals don't work, its time to send for the Delta SEALS!! :bear_w00t:

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

Not sure if this will happen to yours or not, but when I tried to put a used lid on these buckets, it was completely impossible to get it on no matter how hard I tried. The lid had only been used once. I think the little bit of bending of the rim when opening it distorted it to the point it could no longer fit inside the buckets rim. The same lid still fits fine on my other buckets. It seems that if you have these iregularly shaped pails you might have to use a new lid everytime you open it. That was the deal breaker for me, I contacted the company to return these. I wont do me much good if I open 6 gallons of food and cant even put the lid back on. YMMV.

Re: Gamma seals dont fit my 6 gallon pails
 

Why dont you fill it with some warm water and detergent and shake it up. It should build and hold some pressure, either that or it will leak.