[at-l] home made vacuum sealer 1.0 and 1.1

[hopefl@juno.com (Lamar Powell)]

While riding my bike tonight, I got to thinking about food vacuum
sealers, their cost and how I could make one for my backpacking meals.
When I got back to my workshop in the garage I began to look in my scrap
piles for materials. My advice to the world is never though away
anything.

I made a jig to serve as a mini ironing board for the baby bottle lines,
which we seem to have in great quantity, and which I sometimes use to
package food. The jig is made from some scrap pieces of 1x4 board. I
nailed these perpendicular to one another so as to form a T. The T sits
up side down. I covered the narrow edge of the vertical board with some
old T-shirt material. The idea is to have a uniform area of the bottle
liners that can be melted together to form a seal. Oh, I set my wife's
iron to the setting, acrylic and silk. Acrylic and silk? What happened to
the old 1,2,3,4 and 5 that was on the iron my mother had? Where was I?
Oh, acrylic and silk temperature setting; this is where I find the bottle
liners melt and stick together best. Any cooler and they don't stick very
well. Any warmer and the liners tend to melt and stick to the paper that
I put between the plastic and the bottom of the iron.

Next, I got the shop vac and brought it into the kitchen where I was
ironing the liners shut. In my "use what is at hand philosophy," I put
some cheerio cereal in a bottle liner and then attached a crevice tool to
the vacuum hose. For those who don't do much vacuuming, a crevice tool is
a plastic tube that is flatten into a rectangular form. One end is round
so it can be slipped onto the vacuum hose and the rectangular part is
typically a foot or so long. The end of the rectangular tube measures
about 0.5 x 1.5 inches. It fits very nicely into the bottle liner.

Can anyone envision the look on my face when I cut the vacuum switch on
and the stupid thing sucked all my cheerios out of the bottle liner? It
was at this point that I began thinking about version 1.1. The problem is
horse power. Tim Allen not withstanding, 1.5 horse power is more than a
vacuum sealer really needs. Undeterred by the tragic loss of my cheerios,
I returned to the shop where I fashioned a small bracket that is attached
next to the mini ironing board. The bracket and the ironing board form a
narrow slit through which the open end of bottle liner is passed. As the
bottle liner is pulled through, the contents is squeezed towards the
bottom of the liner. The bracket now becomes a gate, in a manor of
speaking, that holds the contents inside the liner. In version 1.2 and
subsequent, I will make a holder for the crevice tool or what ever
replaces it. I'll fashion some means of regulation the amount of suction
and there will be a frame to hold the separator paper which goes between
the iron and the bottle liners.

When Mrs. Hopeful came home from Christmas shopping, I showed her what I
had made, at which point she dryly said, "That's disgusting." This second
emotional blow in one night was almost too much for me to withstand;
first the loss of the cheerios and then my wife's comment. "Why?" I ask
her, "This is a good idea." Without looking up from her shopping bags she
said, "I'm not talking about your idea, I'm talking about that nasty shop
vac in my kitchen and so close to food."

Can Hopeful retrieve his cheerios? Can the vacuum sealer suction be
regulated? Will Mrs. Hopeful unplug the shop vac? Tune in next week for
another exciting episode of Hopeful And His Trusty Drillpress. Brought to
you by the American Crevice Tool Foundation.

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