vacuum sealer

[LizStreithorst]

Yes.  It has both seal only and seal with vacuum buttons.  You actually use yours to seal your fish bags for shipping fish?  I'd do that in a minute if I could figure out how to keep enough air in the bag to keep the fish alive.  How do you do it?

[wsantia1]

I need to understand this process also.

[BillT]

My bag sealer is a heated bar on the bottom with a hinged at one end bar thing to press the bag against the heater.

I put in enough water with the fish to fill it about 1/3.
I then inflate the bag as best I can with O2, hold it closed with my fingers and lay the edge of the bag where I want it sealed over the bar and clamp it down. There is a switch that detects the closing and turns on the heater and a dial for how hot. You control amount of time of heating by letting up on the clamp when you want it to turn off.

The step of getting the bag properly aligned with the heater while keeping the O2 in can be difficult. After messing around with it, I built a little ramp thing from styrofoam so I could lay the bag with air on the ramp and just wiggle it around to get it lined up right. Folding the free edge of the bag over the heater helps keep the gas in.
I usually do a couple of seal in slightly different place as a safety.
You can test the seal by squeezing of course, but not good for the fish (rapid pressure changes).
Works well for cultures like Moina too).

I can also use this method to seal bags containing liquid with no air. Just move the bag so the water line is close to the heater line, and adjust the bag so there is no air left between them.

I'll see if I can find some pictures I might have taken of the process.

[LizStreithorst]

Yes, please look.  I would love to see them.

[BillT]

I coldn't find any pictures of the bag set-up, but I wanted to seal some bags of gravel, so i took some pictures of that. Pictures are low res because they are directly from my computer, but it should be understandable.

This is the sealer set-up.
I could not find my styrofoam ramp so I made a new one of a bit of acrylic sheet supported by a block of foam under it next to the sealer.

Not sure if this image is going to work.
If it does I'll post additional images in subsequent posts. Otherwise I will try to figure out why its not working. Its been a while since I have posted a picture here.

[BillT]

Here it is with a bag filled with gravel on the ramp.
Think of it as water up close to the sealer. If there were more air than water (gravel) in the bag and the bag was moved further down the ramp, you would have a fish bagging set-up.

[BillT]

So that is a fairly easy to control situation for making the seals.

My previous description of how the sealer works was wrong since I hadn't used it for a while.
The dial setting controls the time the heater is on. Press down and hold --> heater turns on, the heater turns itself off at set elapsed time, hold down some more so the melted plastic resolidifies (otherwise it will have problems like sticking to the sealer and streaching out), then release and remove bag.
Cut off excess.

I double seal the bags. In the event one seal leaks, there is another one which hopefully will not leak.

[BillT]

Works with breather bags too.

[Mugwump]

....thanks for the tutorial, Bill......it shows that these rigs can be pretty versatile...

[LizStreithorst]

I bagged up a ton of fish today and I wanted to use the sealer but I need to experiment with your method on empty bags of water  before I actually use it for fish.  I really don't think that I can make it work for shipping fish, but I hope it can.  I hear that zip ties work for sealing bags.  I need to experiment  with that method too.  For some reason rubber bands whup my arse.  My bags of fish tend to leak air and water when I ship fish.  That's the main reason I hate shipping so much.

[Mugwump]

I bagged up a ton of fish today and I wanted to use the sealer but I need to experiment with your method on empty bags of water  before I actually use it for fish.  I really don't think that I can make it work for shipping fish, but I hope it can.  I hear that zip ties work for sealing bags.  I need to experiment  with that method too.  For some reason rubber bands whup my arse.  My bags of fish tend to leak air and water when I ship fish.  That's the main reason I hate shipping so much.

,,,I've used zip ties.....twist the bag up tight...fold the 'twist' over and use zip tie as close to the bag itself.....works pretty good....

..hint...start the zip tie a bit...then you can push the 'loop' over the 'twisted bend' and then just pull tight....

[LizStreithorst]

I think I've got it but I won't know until I try doing it myself.