Vac sealers

Shepnoir

Shepnoir

Active Member
I'm sure there has been threads on this in the past, but what are your guys perfered vacuum sealers? I've had a foodsaver for three seasons and over the last year the seals on 75% of the packs have failed. :mad: Such a waste! When googling I found that they have crappy reviews and their customer service stinks too. Any suggestions on a new brand / unit?
 
I have a food saver as well. They suck! The only way I have found them to stay sealed is to double or triple seal the ends. They will fail in time but it reduced the amount of failures by half for me.
 
I only have experiance with Food saver.
Sucking up liquid is often the thing that kills them and bad seals often caused by moisture. You wont get a seal if the bag getts wet where you seal it.
A tip that I learned is to lay what ever you are packaging on a cookie sheet and partially freeze first. Just enough to freeze the moisture. Pat dry a fillet and freeze for a couple of hours first. Not too long or you will have trouble getting it off the cookie sheet.

Tips
 
Cheers All,

I have found that there is only one professionally recommended unit for fish. I know you can partially freeze or dry off each fillet before you put it in the bag but I find that too time consuming as to be practical.

I purchased a "Vaccupack Elite" (made in Italy) which is stainless steel, has adjustable sealing heats (4X), a crimping seal, automatic or manual mode and, most importantly, has a raised snorkel intake to prevent water or moisture getting into the unit as well as a water filter further down the air inlet. In a longish work - BULLETPROOF!

I also have gone to the pre-formed bags. They work out to be way less money than the rolls and they are all the same size so that I have zero waste. I can re-use each bag 3 times. I purchase big bags for fillets as well as small bags for Nog's Candy Salmon and Nog's Smoked Salmon. I can even put prawn tails in the bag, fill the bag with salt water, and seal the bag with no exposure to the pump to salt water. Try doing that with any other bag. Not possible. It will even seal (using the high heat setting) wet bags by combination of the heat and the crimp. Again...way beyond impressive.

At Christmas we did 400 bags of Indian Candy, Smoked Salmon and Frozen Prawn Tails and other than a couple of bags that were not sealed from factory, NO misfires. Neighbour has a guide company and he has the "TOP OF THE LINE" Foodsaver - and we almost threw it into the ocean. It misfires sometimes more than 1/2 the times with a lot of wasted material, time as well as frayed nerves.

You can find the units through "Professional Marketing Group". On my unit I purchased it and he sent it to Port Angeles. I walked on ferry, walked the 8 blocks to The UPS Store, picked up unit/bags, took a taxi back ($10.00) with all the boxes and caught the same return ferry back to Canada. At boarder I paid HST and was on my way. I brought another unit back for my neighbour.

Professional Marketing Group only handles vaccum baggers and you will find them very professional. I ordered it one day and it was at The UPS Store 2 days later. :) They also have a toll free number which works from Canada.

Give it a look over...you will be impressed. And the owner/operator is a heck of a nice guy, with tons of experience and services what he sells.

I use mine a lot and, other than eventually a new heat bar/tape, do not anticpate my unit ever needing repair.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I own 4 Food Savers and love them. I have only had to return one. The bags have never been a problem. I use alomost 24 rolls of bags each year. I might have 1 or 2 bags out of a hunred pop open but thats not to bad if you ask me.
 
Moisture definetely screws up the seal. I have done the partial freezing thing and it does help.
 
Thanks for the tips guys.

FG, the Vacupack looks great, but with a young family the 6 bills is hard to justify at this point in the game.....sigh...one day.:)

Will have to give the pre freeze technique a whirl, maybe throw some parchment down to make sure that it doesn't stick.
 
Try putting a sheet of paper towel in the bag prior to sealing it, this will take the moisture and allow a seal. It will do nothing to the package and remove the necessary step of pre-freezing. Just remember this, the product won't last forever, so use it or loss it.
 
I purchased a Vaccupack Elite as well after many years with Foodsavers. The unit works great as FG states. The only downside is that there is no way to roll out bags like the foodsaver. Customer service from Thom was absolutely fantastic. He's been in the business a long time.
 
I have used the Foodsaver for a few years now and with a little care have maybe 1 in 15 fail to seal and usually my fault. I use a piece of 1x8 or an old book to raise the bag up off the counter and prevent probs with creasing and bending.
btw rolls of bags are about half the price at Costco.
I find that careful cleaning and attention to detail goes a long way. Wish i could afford a Vaccupack though.
 
Justfish said:
I have used the Foodsaver for a few years now and with a little care have maybe 1 in 15 fail to seal and usually my fault. I use a piece of 1x8 or an old book to raise the bag up off the counter and prevent probs with creasing and bending.
btw rolls of bags are about half the price at Costco.
I find that careful cleaning and attention to detail goes a long way. Wish i could afford a Vaccupack though.
Click to expand...

I have used the foodsaver pro for years with no problems. I do freeze my hali a bit before i seal it. We have also used a piece of papertowl on teh end and that works as well. When doing fish in a marinade i hang the bag over the counter and hit the seal button just before the liquid hits the seal bar.

also I buy pre cut bags from www.halfordsmailorder.com

cheers
 
the paper towel definatly works well been doing that for a while also the bones of the fillets poke through the bag over time so we started putting a paper towel over bony pieces and double seal the top - the water getting sucked up does ruin the foodsaver but you can take them apart and clean and lube with silicone-- my friend also got a 2500 dollar industrial packer which is incredible !! but the bones are still an issue but for this unit you can get heavy duty bags-- dont pack your fillets when they are dripping wet -pat or drip dry - we spend so much money on boats gear trucks and gas the vacuum sealer is pretty reasonable expense for good fish !!
 
Jahfreddy said:
Anyone have experience with this unit?

Looks like a good one, and still in a fairly reasonable price range ....


http://www.vacsealers.com/

I think this is the only distributor in Canada for them, and they also have bags and rolls as well. I'm not sure how the prices compare to those posted in a thread awhile ago.


Reviews:

http://tucsonpictures.com/Vac-001.php

http://www.provacuumsealers.com/



Cheers!
Click to expand...

He is a middle man. He can have them shipped to his place or yours There is a $60 or so fee added. I gave up on the guy. He is bad at getting quotes off to you and returning phone calls. I am still waiting. You can buy direct or just go to most fishing stores they can order them in for you if they don't have them already.

Try this site...on orders over $250 they will include shipping from Alberta. www.halfordsmailorder.com They can get you the same machine and others. Great prices on bags too. On bulk orders they will reduce there prices.
 
I do recommend Halford Hide and Leather. They have always been good to me and they have lots of neat stuff.
 
Vacuumsealers

Cheers All,

Jahfreddy: I looked at that unit but it does not have a raised snorkel nor does it have a water trap so I was not considering it too heavily. The elite is stainless, way better constructed and almost the same money.

However the deciding factor for me was this company is so bad at doing business that I would never even consider them. As Fishassassin123 said, they do not return phone calls, they don't have the information on the units they sell and they don't have product on hand. Seems like every time I call ... it takes weeks and MONTHS for them to return the calls. I can only speak for myself but I would NEVER use this company and, if I ran my company the way they ran theirs, I would have been out of business years ago. I played run around with them for 10 months and then gave up. I have patience but I am no Saint! And, if you ever had problems you would be waiting forever for help
from that source.

Talk to Thom at Professional Marketing Group. They are the professionals!
 
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