Once you’ve cleaned your brass, it’s sitting there inside the Dillon vibratory case cleaner, all nice and clean for loading, but still nestled in the case cleaning media. Obviously, removing cases by hand, and pouring media out of each and every one, would be entirely too time-consuming. Wouldn’t leave you with the cleanest hands in the world either. So, how to swiftly and efficiently separate the cases from the media, ideally while leaving you with clean hands? Good question! Dillon Precision answered that when they designed a device called the case-media separator.
The case-media separator comes in two pieces, (1) a plastic basket with multiple open slots all over it, (2) a largish tub with two metal brackets, one to each side, centered on the tub’s long axis. There’s a doglegged handle running through the basket, and its through-rod rests on the brackets. Coming out of one side of that rod is a prong that fits down into a hole in one of the brackets, to stabilize the basket, and prevent it from moving around. The basket is in two pieces, hinged on one side.
Open up the basket and pour the contents of the vibratory case cleaner, all the cases and media, too, into the part of the basket that’s over the middle of the tub. Most of the media, its individual granules being smaller than the slots in the basket, will run through it and be caught in the tub – but not all of it. Close up the basket, there are two clamps to hold it shut, lift up on one side of the basket and move it slightly to the side, so the stabilizing prong is no longer in the corresponding hole in the bracket. Now the basket can move freely. Begin cranking the handle, the basket will spin, cases will bounce around, dislodging any media, and centrifugal force will cause it to be flung out of the basket, through the slots.
You’ll want to open up the basket once or twice, to detect and remove any media caught in the hinges. You aren’t doing all this to get rid of media just to have it reinsert itself back in with the cases when you decant your brass. Keep spinning until you see no more media exiting the basket.
When you’re sure all the media’s out, open up the basket, you’ll see your cases, free of media, sitting there waiting for you, all sparkly-clean. At this point, I pour the basket’s contents into a cardboard box. If I’m using a Dillon reloading machine with a case feeder, I then pour the cases from the box into the case feeder. If I’m using a Square Deal, which has no case feeder, I sit the box on the reloading bench next to the machine within easy reach of my right hand while reloading.
Now pour the media from the case-media separator’s tub back into the vibratory case cleaner’s bowl and you’re ready to clean brass again next time.
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