the shellsorter

Has anyone tried this plastic sorting gadget. Looks interesting.

got any feedback????????????

JimB

Yep, it makes things a little bit easier for sorting. Granted you still have to do alot of it by hand but it at least categorizes most of it. Depends how much brass you have to sort, but I think it helps. Just remember that 30-06/.308 plug up the top section pretty quickly if you have alot so you just have to pick those out first before the others feed down into it
 
I bought three sets we use to sort the brass barrel from the club, usually 1/2 a 55 gal drum at a time. It definately cuts down the sort time, by at LEAST 50%. The downsides: 9mm and .380 sort together. You still have to manually seperate the Blazers. berdan primed case, etc. Worth every cent if you have a lot of brass to seperate.
 
Maybe I'm just too cheap.... er... I mean frugal... yeah, frugal.... to buy all sorts of additional gadgets.

Here's my sorting method:

I place a double handful of cases (mixed range brass), on a sheet of newspaper on the top of my reloading bench. I surround myself with small flat rate boxes (free from the post office), each with a different marking on a flap facing me. .40 S&W, 9MM, 45 ACP, etc, etc, etc.

I start the sort by pulling the largest ones of the same thing out of the flat pile. Like .308's. Then, I move to the next biggest, maybe 5.56 cases.... It's easy to concentrate on one size at a time. I keep going until I have only the smallest on the bench. Those are usually the .380's.

I reload with a new double handful pile. I can sort a five gallon bucket in about 1.5 hours. No biggie.
 
Maybe I'm just too cheap.... er... I mean frugal... yeah, frugal.... to buy all sorts of additional gadgets.

Here's my sorting method:

I place a double handful of cases (mixed range brass), on a sheet of newspaper on the top of my reloading bench. I surround myself with small flat rate boxes (free from the post office), each with a different marking on a flap facing me. .40 S&W, 9MM, 45 ACP, etc, etc, etc.

I start the sort by pulling the largest ones of the same thing out of the flat pile. Like .308's. Then, I move to the next biggest, maybe 5.56 cases.... It's easy to concentrate on one size at a time. I keep going until I have only the smallest on the bench. Those are usually the .380's.

I reload with a new double handful pile. I can sort a five gallon bucket in about 1.5 hours. No biggie.

I use the "Modified Duke Method". All the same as above, except my two boys are the ones doing the sorting. I've found my hands stay much cleaner this way.
 
I found it to be a waste of time and money.

I sort 9mm, 40, 38Sp, 45, .223/5.56 and 9 fits into 40, which fits into 45. You still have to sort by hand, and I can do it quicker than with the holely wash basins.
 
Maybe I'm just too cheap.... er... I mean frugal... yeah, frugal.... to buy all sorts of additional gadgets.

Here's my sorting method:

I place a double handful of cases (mixed range brass), on a sheet of newspaper on the top of my reloading bench. I surround myself with small flat rate boxes (free from the post office), each with a different marking on a flap facing me. .40 S&W, 9MM, 45 ACP, etc, etc, etc.

I start the sort by pulling the largest ones of the same thing out of the flat pile. Like .308's. Then, I move to the next biggest, maybe 5.56 cases.... It's easy to concentrate on one size at a time. I keep going until I have only the smallest on the bench. Those are usually the .380's.

I reload with a new double handful pile. I can sort a five gallon bucket in about 1.5 hours. No biggie.

I do it in a similar fashion except I use some plastic bins that I got from walmart. i then count them out into boxes of 100 and shelve them.
 
I use them and find it useful if you're dealing with a large quantity of brass.

It allows you do a primary sort through all of them. You'll likely still need to pick through them to get the piggybacked cases but it will save you some time up front.

It's certainly not a perfect solution. 38's and 357's get caught in the blue layer with the 40's. 380's get caught in the black layer along with the 9's so you'll have to separate those manually.
 
I just got mt shell sorter and wasn't all that impressed with it. You have to do a lot of picking and sorting by hand. It works, just not as fast as I had hoped. Then, I realized my mistake. I have recently been shooting a lot of 9mm which I reload on a 550, leaving the 1050 gathering dust, so I forgot about the unique problems of the 1050.

The biggest PITA with the 1050, or any other press with a case feeder, is the odd case of the wrong caliber that will jam the machine. Running your brass through the shell sorter should cull out the odd case that could cause this problem. To me, this alone, is worth the price of the sorter.

Don't take my opening remarks as a bad review of the shell sorter, it works and is much faster that sorting by hand. It just wasn't the "magic wand" I had hoped for. In retrospect, I was expecting way to much from a very simple (and inexpensive) machine.
 
I also bought one of those brass pickers. This unit works well but will pick up any case it comes across. If you buy one of these the shell sorter become almost a necessity, because you will be picking up a lot of strange brass.
 
I'm holding out for the set of magnets:

Blue magnet only picks up 45 ACP
Red magnet only picks up 40 S&W
Yellow magnet only picks up 9mm
Green magnet only picks up 5.56
Black magnet only picks up aluminum cases
Brown magnet only pick up steel cases.

So far, I only have the Brown magnet. Saving up my $$$$ for the rest of the set.
 
I now sort right after the range. That way I am only dealing with a few hundred cases tops and a couple of different cals. I load and shoot a number of different cals and used to go insane sorting 5 gal buckets full.
 
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