pining for a vacuum bag machine - part 2

I have been deliberating of buying a vacuum bag sealing machine on and off for a long time. I have not purchase one due to my skepticism with common household small kitchen appliances. I have began making my own sausages and more recently smoked salmon. Making sausages (cured meat in general) and smoked salmon are much more work than preparing a meal. You want to make a big batch for the effort to be worthwhile. It also cut down waste as well as lower cost through the economy of scale.

I was so close to picking up a FoodSaver from Costco when I decided to make a lot of smoked salmon. Fortunately for me it wasn't on sale. As I said I am skepticism with common household small appliances and a vacuum sealer weakest links are the vacuum pump and the heaters for sealing the bag. I also not wanting to be locked into buying the FoodSaver brand bags. I did a bit of research and quickly decided on this Weston PRO-2300. It cost more than twice the FoodSaver at Costco.

Knowing the supply of Alaska's Copper River sockeye salmon is limited I want to make enough to last a few months. Today the vacuum sealer machine arrived. I was shocked to see how big the package is.

it is 19 inch wide and near 14 pounds - definitely does not look like a toy

The PRO-2300 has stainless steel housing. While the product package have the typical appearance of a common cheap consumer product made in China, the quality of the machine is far from cheap. If this was built in the USA say 15 years ago before the flood of Chinese made product this machine could easily cost over $1000.

it turns out this machine is made in Taiwan (in my experience, Taiwan made typically has higher quality than PRC made); even the bottom panel is stainless steel; you can see the ribbing that support the vacuum chamber's plastic tray behind the ventilation grill

 a storage compartment for the power cord

the plexiglass vacuum chamber cover is about 3/4 inch thick with 2 very well made hinges; note also the bumper

removing the protective plastic sheet

the vacuum chamber has two ports that is raised to mitigate the chance of food liquid being sucked into the machine; the seals are very high quality foam; the strip heater are covered by a piece of taflon-like tape

it is not a small machine because it can seal bags as wide as 15-inch - hence the plexiglass cover, the plastic tub, and the steel chassis are also proportionally beefier for structural reasons

The fit and finish of the construction is impeccable. The stainless steel parts are perfectly formed and punched. There is no uneven gaps nor sharp burrs. All the parts down to the handle for the lid that are visible are of above average quality. I was impressed even the cut out of the protective film around the top label is accurate to 1 mm.

The machine specifies it can create 28" of mercury of vacuum. This is about 0.94 atmosphere or 13.82 pound per square inch. I did a rough measurement of the area of the chamber and found it to be about 36 square inches. This computes to a whopping 497 pounds of pressure on the Plexiglass cover!

the parts list shows the dual-piston vacuum pump; there is not much in it so most of the weight comes from the the key elements - the vacuum pump, the transformer, the heavy gauge stainless steel chassis, and the parts that make up the vacuum chamber

 the cooling fan port on the side

For to start, I bought 100 of the 8x12 inch bags and it works out to about $0.23 per bag.

just press START and in just a few seconds the bag is evacuated and sealed

sometimes if you stain the inside of the bag with food matter or oil the heat seal forming can be defective; i experiment with doing a double seal

I don't plan on the trouble of doing a double seal. Instead of making the heat seal near the end of the bag. I would make it further in so if the first seal is defective (as can be visually determined) I can make a second seal further out after cleaning the inside of the bag carefully.

The operation of the machine is very simple. So far this machine exceeds my expectations. I am hoping for it  provide a lot of service in years to come. However I want to give it some time before rendering my final judgement to see how well the vacuumed bags of food hold up (e.g. if they develop leak either at the seam, or worst through the plastic material - all plastic are porous (is as surprising as all glass creeps because glass is a plastic!) to varied degree depends the gas it is used to seal. The smaller the gas molecules the leakier the plastic.

At 19 inch wide and weights in at 14 pounds it is definitely not a toy kitchen appliance.