I got tired of food turning into frost bitten garbage so I bought a vacuum sealer last year. Naturally I had to experiment with it.
Two of the best non-food uses I found are water proofing and volume reduction of items in my BOB. Volume reduction of things like my USGI poncho, socks, gloves and beanie, emergency blankets, Tyvek coverall was significant.
One might think this is great way to fit more gear in your BOB, GHB, get out of Dodge bag, or whatever you want to call it. In my case, I did it so I can ditch my military style 72hr backpack and switch to a smaller, less LARPy, less cumbersome backpack.
It is a Nesco VS-12. It works great but two complaints. It is really slow to seal, which is only an issue when bagging wet foods like pulled pork, and sometimes does not seal wet foods allowing air to get back in the bag.
It also crushes some foods, like fried eggplant. It would be better if it had a stop suction and start sealing function.
Other than that it is fantastic, and maybe the issues are just the way it is with these machines. We bought two of the SR rib roasts and I cut them up into 3 serving portions. They still look great, no frost at all. also use it to pack up porkroll and reseal bacon.
The quality of the bags is important, some are more food safe than others, and some are stronger than others.
I’m a big fan of these things, use it all the time and been doing it for 20 years with the same FoodSaver machine.
I seal a lot of fish, meat and garden products for the freezer, and buy things like spices and rice in bulk at the Indian Grocery (way cheaper and way fresher) and have learned two important tricks…
Pre freeze wet items to keep it from sucking juice into the area that’s going t be melted/sealed
If you plan on long term storage, double seal each end (about 1/3 +/- inch apart)
I have the same unit. If you start the vac & seal process, you can interrupt it at any time by pressing manual seal and it will immediately stop pulling vacuum and seal the bag. I do this fairly often when bagging big batches of pulled pork. I also found using the double seal mode helps with seal ruptures in the freezer.