Anyone seen or know of a place to get a can sealer for #10 sized cans that is not in the $600.00+ price range?  Everywhere I look for new is well over $600.00 and ebay has "junk" antique things with no parts for over $400.00 when they have them.

Also, has anyone seen a lid, screw on or otherwise, for a 5 gal plastic bucket with a pressure relief valve built in?  ie, you fill bucket with dry goods, flour, sugar ,etc.  You put in a chunk of dry ice in the bottom and seal the lid.  As the dry ice "melts", the lid will pop off or sides will burst.  If there was a relief valve built into lid, then the excess pressure will leak out and all oxygen will be purged from the bucket.  

Just looking to bolster up my mre stores with something with a little more shelf life.  

Thanks for any information.

Patrick

A lot of people on here will tell you to skip the dry ice, and get some mylar bags and O2 obsorbers.

There was a thread a little while back regarding a 10# can sealer... no luck finding them cheaper than $7-800. If you can locate a LDS facility near you and find out about using their equipment.

use mylars and o2's plastic buckets arent air tight they will leech out air/in and soak in smells from the outside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW7_cTn6YpE

Watch these videos, they will answer all your questions.

Much more easy and SAFE way of packing than dry ice. THIS is how your professional packers are packing superpails now, why mess with jury rigged ways?

Dry ice- gone the way of the dinosaurs. Ice sometimes hard to find, can be unsafe to work with.

DE- should be very little need for this if your buying remotely good dry goods to pack in the first place. The bags that DE comes in have warnings against INHALATION, so tell me again that your going to COAT YOUR FOOD IN IT?????? Forget it.

Bay leaves- I posted pics on Frugals of dry goods I packed in the late 80's and early 90's WITH bay leaves because they supposedly "keep bugs out" that were literally TEEMING WITH BUGS! Bay leaves keeping bugs out seems to be an old wives tale.

"Pop bottles"- - in an attempt to reuse something a lot of people have around, some folks tell you to put up dry good in pop bottles. Very little thought was ever given to this idea evidently. Your talking a VERY THIN MATERIAL that by it's very nature is DESIGNED to biodegrade in a short period of time and packing food in there. More times than not, this sort of thin plastic does NOT have the strength to hold up when using oxygen absorbers. Also, this method is ONLY remotely useful in small quantities- i.e, 1 or 2 bottles. At a max of maybe 8 lbs. per 2 liter, your going to need 6 or more to equal a bucket. Practice a loadout with 50 or 100 of these pop bottles. A bucket (50 lbs on average) can be carried with one hand with a HAND FREE to assess a weapon, carry a child, other gear, etc. Try carrying 50 lbs. of stuff in "pop bottles" with one hand. When you practice your load out with 50 2 liter pop bottles, be sure you time yourself. Also pop bottles are not LIGHT PROTECTED, so oxidation IS going to be a problem with your food. Smells in the area of storage from fuels, cleaners, dead animals or just your smelly socks IS going to infiltrate your food and make it smell that way also. After you realize this logic, save the pop bottles for SHORT TERM water storage. These are not LONG TERM storage containers.


Storage food is NOT getting any cheaper guys. The correct packing materials are still relatively INEXPENSIVE. Don't "step over a dollar to pick up a dime."  Cheap packing materials and half way methods WILL LEAD TO LOSSES. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.

The rice you are putting up now at $17. per 50 will likely be $30.00 per 50 or more by the time you rotate it. It was $14. per 100 when I first started putting food up in the late 80's. So if you cheese out with half way methods and short life packing materials, your likely to find your food INVESTMENT in bad shape in 10 or 20 years when you rotate it.

Here's a link to CHEAP absorbers and mylars

Mylars and Oxygen absorbers

Watch the videos, use these methods and your kids will be rotating your food if you forget!

Remember, your making an INVESTMENT in your food, PROTECT IT. You wouldn't buy a tricked out top of the line rifle and then drag it on a rope behind your truck would you?

Lowdown3

Where in Texas are you lost angel? My folks live in Denton and go to the Mormon cannery in Dallas. I pretty sure you can dry can there even if you aren’t Mormon.

I tried looking up some info on LDS.org but got nothing, but google pointed me to this here


www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00082Y

Quoted: Where in Texas are you lost angel? My folks live in Denton and go to the Mormon cannery in Dallas. I pretty sure you can dry can there even if you aren’t Mormon.

The LDS cannery is in Carrollton (North Dallas area). I called them yesterday to ask about going.

They are only open Wednesdays from 9am-3:30pm. They will ask what "ward" you belong to. Before calling I had looked up the nearest ward to my home which happened to be "Plano 1st Ward". When they asked i told them that, and they had no more questions for me, just told me when to show up and what to do. I'm looking forward to my first trip in the next week or so.

It is bad to breathe in DE but ingesting it is perfectly safe. If you have ever used packaged flour you have ingested DE. The problem with breathing it in is its abrasiveness. Our lungs are sensitive and don't do well with much more than air in them. Breathing in any fine powder is bad. Breathing in an abrasive powder like DE makes it worse.

Ingesting DE is perfectly fine. Lots of people do so on a regular basis to help digestion. It even kills parasites in the digestive track.

tag.