[UniChef]

Try this site-
teflon heat seal tape

I used to use Teflon tape on heat seal machines for t-shirts and hats. It is way hotter than what your food saver runs at so you will not have an issue with it.

They also have sheets that you can cut to your specs.

Thanks for the heads up. I have been considering getting a sealer. I sure won't get a FoodSaver.

[mattie405]

Old School.......I hope the envelope arrived by now and that you can use the stuff to repair your machine, let me know if it works for you. Mattie

[oldschool1982]

Mattie,

Thanks again!. Apologies for not getting back sooner, forgot about things because of a couple challenges we are having here. Plus I haven't had need to use the food saver in a week. That's gotta be a new record for me Kinda that whole "outta sight outta mind" thing.

Unfortunately we haven't seen it in the mail as of yesterday afternoon, but things in this little City of our tend to go slower than normal with the mail. We have a Post Office but they do no official sorting there. It's all been moved to another facility up the road. Really stupid if you ask me but I"m not running the Post Office today.

Maybe today. I'll post something or PM ya as soon as we get it.

Later

[fish2live]

I've been going through the same hassle and today received an exact duplicate of the previously posted response letter from Jardin. I just found another forum that directs to the website for Cleveland Equipment, which sells a variety of heat sealers and repair parts. One kit for $8 includes two 12" heat sealing bars and two teflon fabric strips. The Foodsaver Pro II has a 12" sealing bar. I'm hoping that it will be compatible since there can't be many companies in the world making heat sealing bars. At that price it's worth taking the chance.

[menusnearu01]

You are doing good job......
All the best......

Menus Nearu

[deltadoc]

While we've not had any problem with the sealing strip, I'm fed up (no pun intended) with the way the bags lose their vacuum in the freezer. We've had our unit for several years, and the bags seem to lose vacuum much more than they used to. We've tried put the sealed bags into grocery bags and then into the freezer to cut down on abrasion. Helps a little. As far as the price of the bags, we wait until Fleet Farm has them on sale. The only rationale I can come up with, is the cost of food is increasing all the time, and saving the food in vacuum bags cuts down on losing taste due to the freezer environment.

As far as dealing with appliance people, stay clear of Rival, especially their "Deep Fryer" . Called the company because it didn't fry very well. I gave them the results of using a candy thermometer to show that at a setting on the Rival of 300F yielded (after waiting for the green light to come on and checking the temperature 3 times over the next 15 minutes) of about 210F. The Rival setting of 375 yielded a candy thermometer reading of 230F. No amount of waiting could get the oil up to 300, let alone 350 or 375!

They were happy to replace it FREE! Yeah, except I would have to pay shipping to ship the bad unit (brand new) and shipping for the replacement unit. A total greater than going to the store (including tax) and buying another one. With no promise that it would work any better. An internet search yielded a whole 17 pages of dissatisfied Rival deep fryer customers with the same complaint, including paying more to replace it through the company's warranty than just going out and buying a new one.

Watch out for Subzero refrigerator/freezers too! Especially since Wolf now owns them.

And the list grows longer every day!

doc

[Dillbert]

doc -

many yrs ago I had cause to investigate the 'failures' - what we found was with age the sealing efficient decreased.

goop build up, elements not running as hot, jaw warping / uneven sealing.
looks okay to the naked eye, but the seal is not as 'tight' as a brand new unit - especially at the corners/ends of the bag. basically, it starts "leaking" the instant it comes out of the sealer - albeit rather slowly....

certainly something poking a hole while moving about the freezer isn't going to help <g>
our experiments were constructed with frozen bags inside a freezer flooded with special gases. we could measure how much and how fast the outside gases got in....

I explained it like gluing two pcs of wood together. you can gloop up the seam, press the two pcs together to get good glue smear around, walk away; you will get a "bond"
if the two pcs are _clamped_ together, you get a better bond . . .

[MGM]

My Foodsaver has a couple of small areas where the teflon strip has deteriorated/burned, consequently these areas get too hot and melt through the bag frequently ruining the seal.

I saw a post that suggested using RTV red gasket maker purchased from an auto parts or hardware store. Ace Hardware didn't have red but had "Ultra Copper" by Permatex which has a higher temperature rating (700 F) than red, about $9.00 for a 3 oz tube. Using the supplied application nozzle cut open just below the tip at its smallest diameter I applied a 1/8 inch bead down the center of the teflon sealing strip along its entire length then lightly ran my finger down the bead to spread it out in a very thin layer along the entire width of the sealing strip making sure there weren't any thin/bare spots. I let it cure for about 6 hours (the instruction on the tube say 24 hours) and tried sealing a bag and it worked. Also did 10 repetitive seals at the highest setting and each came out fine and the gasket material remained in tact with no smoke or fumes.

Trial and error tips and discoveries:
1. When running your finger down the bead do it with one motion from end to end. If you stop in the middle you'll leave a ripple.

2. Once cured the gasket material it is a little fragile because of its thinness and can tear. Very light rubbing with hot water and soap to clean is about all it will tolerate, no scrubbing.

3. If the gasket material does tear after it's cured, you can peal the whole thing off and do a new application. Nice to know once you've done it you can go back to where you started and haven't made things worse.

4. The technical sheet for the gasket maker says it's non-toxic.

5. Don't know if you can just make "spot" repairs or not. The gasket material doesn't adhere strongly to the teflon and may peal off after a short time.

6. I don't know what the longevity of the repair will be.

7. You'll (I am) more likely to misplace or lose the tube of gasket maker before you ever use it up.

8. It looks a little tacky, at least when I do it, so you may not want to use your vacuum packer as a display model.

Hope this is of help to some.

Mike