This past weekend I finally got a chance to do some more reloading. I realized that it's been over a year since I last did so—far too long! Since the last time I've collected a lot of brass that needed cleaning up, so I had the vibratory tumbler running most of the weekend. And, at the conclusion of each batch's run through the tumbler I got to use my new case/media separator. Ahhh!
I used to use a tumbler screen—a plastic pie plate with slots in the bottom that allowed the media to fall through to a bucket underneath. In theory, I should be able to hold the plate on top of the tumbler's bucket and then quickly flip both onto a waiting bucket. In practice, I could usually manage the flip, but the screen would fall down into the bucket and I'd end up picking a bunch of brass out of the media in the bucket.
Of course, after I finished that I'd end up having to go through all the brass and tap all the polishing media out of each case. Talk about a boring, time-wasting exercise!
Well, no more. RCBS's rotary separator eliminates both hassles. I can upend the tumbler bucket over the separator's black case cage, close the cage, close the outer bucket, and spin the inner cage a few times. Ta da—I'm done! All the media is sitting in the bottom of the outer bucket and all the cases are free of media in the black case cage. It takes all of 20 seconds, compared to 10 minutes to handle 100 cases the old way, and my hands stay clean.
Easily the best $31 I've spent on reloading equipment.
The only draw-back is that the hinges of the black case are kinda tough to snap together, while the hinges on the green media collector are a little too easy to snap together and so they tend to come un-hooked if you aren't careful. Neither issue seriously detracts from the utility of the device, though.
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