Vaccum sealing a rifle

Vacuum bags are not very reliable. They tend to lose vacuum over time, especially the consumer grade stuff like food saver. Some hold for years, some only for days. In my opinion it would be too risk to trust one for long term and unsupervised storage. I can only guess that a more reliable option would be pvc pipe and grease.
 
I'd imagine with a couple silica packs ( not touching anything ) it would work pretty good.
 
fuelpiper said:
I can only guess that a more reliable option would be pvc pipe and grease.
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Any air in it would condense with temp changes. I'd believe it would have to be completely filled, no gaps with grease.
 
Cosmoline and wax paper stuck in PVC and sealed. Don't wrap it in rags as they will draw moisture.
 
I used pvc pipe (the big ones) and slid the rifle in a silicone sleeve along with ammo and some O2 absorbers and buried it on my property in Arkansas 1.5 yrs ago and dug it up this summer. All good. Not a speck of rust. Also saw a guy on the prepper show did the same but sunk his in a pond, with no issues
 
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You cav use VCI bags fpr storage. I am not sure how long they stay active for but i have some in my basement now for about 3 years and still working fine.
 
Zbizzle911 said:
Oh and vaseline works for many things ou just gotta watch out for her getting an infection lol
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I find it so cute when guys refer to their guns as "her".

:D
 
if you wanna use grease a good type is axle grease no salts in them and it takes extreme heat to melt it but pvc otherwise is best deal with a small block at one end pf pipe and put your Silica Gel or whatever you use at that end so it won't touch gun or get in grease if you really wanna get all the oxygen out you can get a co2 canister and fill the tube with it before capping off the co2 is heavier and will push out most of the oxygen if you hold it upright as your filling. Learned this making wine
 
Protect any wood from oil or grease as it will asorb and be ruined. Best to put wood in a separate plastic bag with the coated metal.

-R
 
If I needed to prepare a gun for long term storage, I'd first coat it in a thick coating of vaseline (yes, it will work just fine) and afterwards wrap it in a few layers of wax paper and butchers tape. Make sure to get it inside the bore and action too. All metal and wood parts need to be coated.

Afterwards, seal it in a PVC tube. There are screw type cleanouts you can use for an easy to open tube, or you can glue on pipe ends for a more watertight seal. (but you'll need a hacksaw to open it later). Fill the extra space in the tube with ammo that's been double wrapped in vacuum seal bags, and a few packs of desiccant. You can use a thin coat of clear nail polish around the bullet and primer to insure that no moisture can get inside the ammo. A gun stored that way should last for decades without degrading.

It would probably also be a good idea to chose a gun with stainless steel and all-weather plastic furniture for storage.
 
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Haven't done it with long guns but got 250 ea M1911A1s out of depot in 03' for Iraq that had been vaccumed pack in thick plastic bags. Pistols were heavily greased.

CD
 
It wouldn't be too hard to glue up a big PVC pipe with a reducer - or a series of reducers - on one end that had a ball valve. Store your rifle inside with some desiccant, throw a vacuum on the whole assembly and close the valve. Pack the exposed end of the valve with silicone to reduce the risk of failure.
 
I have tried vacuum sealing parts and a long gun. Neither worked.

There are just too many sharp points and the bags will not seal.

I used industrial grade, make your own length bags and an industrial grade vacuum sealer. When they didn't hold, I tried wrapping the rifle in a piece of wool blanket with a desiccate bag in the magwell. It held for about 24 hours longer than without.
 
Just my opinion, not backed by any experience:
It seems to me that sealing a gun inside a rigid container (such as a PVC pipe) in a vacuum only protects it because, by pulling the vacuum, you have removed the air, along with any moisture that may have been in that air. But once you do this, then you have about 15 psi of pressure on the outside of the container and if there is a leak you'll get air (around 20% oxygen) coming in, plus whatever moisture may be in that air. I would be more inclined to fill the container with dry nitrogen, maybe even at a very low positive pressure (to minimize stress on the seals) so that any minor leakage would be nitrogen out, not air in.


Also, silica gel absorbs water vapor from the air, which is good, but the air is still about 20% oxygen so, being paranoid as I am, if I used silica gel in a sealed container (without replacing the air with nitrogen) I would also add some packs of an oxygen absorber.
 
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I've tried the food saver bags before with desiccant packs in them; storing them at my dad's place in a safe in a non-controlled garage. Wanted to keep them from rusting and him from farting around with them.

80% of the handguns done this way lasted 5+ years, but only 1 rifle out of 5 made it to the 5 year mark. One shotgun didn't even make it a month, but it was a POS so I didn't bother trying to reseal it. It was just fine when I pulled it out so perhaps some good was done even without the vacuum. He was moving things in/out of the safe over those years so its' likely they were bumped a few times in storage.

I also had some gold and silver packed up in a PVC pipe and buried for those 5+ years. On those smaller items the bags worked, but there were no sharp edges and the stuff was totally undisturbed the whole time, save for a small earthquake rattling them around in the tube.
 
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