Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Anyone know of a good sealer, been through 2 cheapo food-savers. About a third of the time bags lost their seal after a few days, and I always triple seal. Plus you have to use their $$$ bags. Can't seem to find anything in between the plastic junk and the $$$ commercial ones.

This one looks okay, it's their 'Entry Level', $2,500 - $ 4,000 depending on the options.

http://www.alinesys.com/images/entry...er-2-large.jpg

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

randy matt-

I wonder if these would work for you.
You can seal a bag. (from tubing),
snip a corner, and suck most of the air
out with a straw, then seal the corner.

These manual (hand) heat sealers are bomb proof.
They are available from many companies, online.
The seam is about 3/16" wide, not a very narrow
seam like a Seal-A-Meal. (Never had a FoodSaver.)
I have used these commercial hand heat sealers
for many years, but only to seal ordinary
poly tubing. I don't know what FoodSaver
bag material is, but poly will leak oxygen,
albeit very slowly. For non-food or dry food
items, heavy poly tubing plus an oxygen
absorber packet might work. Or put dry food
in a thin bakery bag, then heat seal in heavy
poly. Or experiment with sealing FoodSaver
bags/tubing with one of these.

heatsealers.net

dtnwn

Edit-

Checked the link and noticed that these days
you can choose from a variety of seam widths,
.... cool.

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Thanks Sam, have to check into this.

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

BTW, these manual heat sealers will
seal "ziplock" freezer bags, which I
assume must be food-grade poly.

dtnwn

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Great idea to seal the corner. How do you seal without burning your lips? Can't get that close to a flat iron.

There are mylar bags available, from WaltonFeed for example. A see-through layer of metal stops the O2 it seems. They are ziplock with an bottom open for sealing.

Aloksak has medical-grade ziplocs, which are expensive, of course, but impervious even to outgassing of vapors.

It's hard to beat squishing a heavy ziploc bag. Cheap, easy, no kit.

TS

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

TS-

Yer kidding right?

You snip just enough off a corner to insert
a straw, my sister can do it without a straw
(no jokes please :-)), then pinch the hole
closed, and use a heat sealer to make a short
diagonal seam just in front of the hole.

dtnwn

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

If your not looking to spend a couple thousand on a vacumn sealer and you don't want to spend 50 cents a bag for the vacumn-sav'r

This is around $100
The bags are much cheaper...but you do have to buy in bulk. But a decent sized bag is only 10 cents each.

http://www.sorbentsystems.com/sinbosealer.html

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Wow! they got alot of stuff! :yippee:

Even these are alot cheaper than F-S bags. (1gal F-S about $0.66)

10.0"x14.0" O.D. 3.5 mil Mylar Bags
PAKVF3.5M 3.5 mils
(1 gallon size / #10 can equivalent volume)

http://sorbentsystems.com/images/Shield_520.jpg

1000 - $107.50 ($0.215 /ea)

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

I Like Tilia FS.

For the past 6 years, I would take my big Tilia up to MN to package the homemade sausage for 4 families and walleye to take back down to Houston. It works great and when buying the bags on ebay it is fairly inexpensive bag wise. You can reuse the bags - they are strong (but I am lazy). I just used it this last weekend bagging 40 lbs. of ground beef. See ebay sample below.
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Tilia-Foodsa...QQcmdZViewItem


My Dad bought a tilia like below this year. We compared the 2. The big one can work and work. The small one needs a 30 second break in between seals, but it does almost as well - vaccuum wise.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Tilia-Foodsaver-...QQcmdZViewItem

To me, the bigger one is worth it and will probably last longer. If you have a bagger person and a sealer person, it's nice not to have to wait 30 seconds in between seals. The bottle sealer capability is nice, as well.

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Just got mine :yippee: Also got a impulse sealer for the heavy 5mil mylar bags. Report to follow.

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Very nice for the money! Thanks again for the link aikitrader. :wavey:

Got about 40 1 gal bags done this afternoon: :yippee:

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

randymatt-

I see that you bought an impulse sealer.

After the timer cuts off the heat,
KEEP HOLDING DOWN THE HANDLE
until the seam cools down a bit
(a few seconds).

Try to pull the seam apart.
With poly, the material will stretch and fail before
the seam parts. If the seam isn't strong enough,
increase the pulse duration a bit.

With poly, you don't have to use
a knife or scissors. Near the end of the
heat cycle, while still holding down the handle,
simply tear the material off one side.
The same technique might work with Mylar,
... saves a ton of time, especially if you are using
tubing rather than pre-made bags.

You can use the impulse sealer on "Ziploc" poly
bags. I do it to sort and store small parts.

I am confused about the tradename Mylar,
it seems to be used somewhat loosely
these days. I thought Mylar had a strength
bias, but now I read that it doesn't. At
any rate, polyethylene film stretches, mylar
should not.

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Thanks for that Sam, I found that out in my first test. The mylar bags are 5mil thick so I had to turn it up a bit. In my test I filled a bag half full of water then tried to break the seal by standing on it (185lbs) then jumping up and down on it :yippee: ,,, no stretch, no break!

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Randy-

Wow, great!
Ahm gonna have to get me
some of those Mylar bags!

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

These are the ones I got:
PAKVF4C
5.0 mils- Food Grade
http://sorbentsystems.com/specs/pakvf4c.html

Also it said the 2mm sealer would NOT seal them, you have to get the 5mm, I got this one:
IPK-305H
http://www.sorbentsystems.com/impulsesealers.html

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Thanks Randy

I'll try the big sealer I have,
if it doesn't work on 5 mil Mylar,
I'll get the one you have.

Edit: I see what you mean.
I just checked. Mine is 12" but only 430 watt.

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

These look great. I had good luck with my food saver. Only 1 bag has lost its rock hard contents seal (loose beans or grain becoming brick like is my easy guide to the vacuum) and I have used it maybe 8 years and buy our grains, beans and meat in bulk and have gone through many many rolls of bags. We have used beans and grains sealed 5 years with no seal problems.

It has been wonderful at stamping out freezer burn too.

The bags are expensive though, and I want a backup since I have used this so much I figure it is bound to wear out eventually.

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

So let me get this straight-- the TILIA foodsaver can seal the mylar bags as well? Or can it only do plastic?

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

anyone know?

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

Just received an impulse sealer and
mylar bags, the same model number as
Randy bought. (IPK-305H)

Well, when I got the 1300 watt sealer,
the packing docs indicated 1100 watts,
and the sealer itself was marked with 800
watts. So I called up the supplier.
They said try it, if it doesn't seal 5 mil
mylar, we will get you one that will.

I tired it and it works great.
Yup, Randy I jumped hard on the bags,
they held together perfectly.
Besides a strong seam, the material is tough,
if not nicked on an edge, I can only tear
a bag open using considerable effort.

dtnwn

Re: Looking For Good Vacuum Sealer
 

As far as I know my Food Saver is ONLY intended for its own brand and design of plastic bags. It has an attachment for vacuum sealing canning jars as well. I would not trust it with mylar myself.

The bags are expensive, but on the plus side, tough and thick. I especially like the rolls because I can seal long items to protect them from water damage using the rolls. The 'bags' come as quart bags, gallon bags, and 2 widths of 'trim to suit' rolls.