Shell Sorter Value Pack for Sorting Mixed Brass by Caliber

Although a bit expensive for what they actually are, the sorting trays more than make up for it in time saved. We have our own range that's used by family, friends, CHL classes, and a couple local police departments so we collect an awful lot of brass that has to be sorted and cleaned. The trays are made of very durable plastic and have held up well through countless thousands of rounds. They work as advertised and are best used 1 at a time with 2 5 gallon utility buckets. The yellow tray catches .45 and most of your larger caliber rifle brass. The blue tray gets .40/10mm, .38, and .357. The black catches .380, 9mm and .223/5.56. Everything smaller falls into the bucket for recycling. The optional .380 plate is used with the yellow tray and does OK at sifting through the 9mm/.380, but its pretty slow and I'm not entirely convinced its worth it. More on that later. The yellow tray is definitely fast. It can go through a 5 gallon bucket of mixed brass in about 5 minutes unless its heavily loaded with rifle calibers or oddballs like .50 or .460 S&W. Those would then have to be hand sorted by head stamp. The blue tray is significantly slower since it catches more case calibers that have to be hand sorted. The .38/.357 cases catch by the rim and the body falls through the slot. That's actually pretty helpful since you can slightly tilt the tray and quickly rake off the .40/10mm from the top and then dump the .38/.357. I'd say a typical 5 gallon bucket, after it's been run through the yellow tray is 30 minutes to an hour depending on how much hand sorting you have to do and how many nested cases you have to separate. The black tray is pretty slow since it clogs up really fast catches 9mm and .223/5.56 which are typically the bulk of you range brass. You really can only run about two handfuls at a time through it and it has to be more thoroughly sifted to bounce out all the .22. Finally, the .380 plate is extremely slow. You definitely can only do a small handful at a time. For it to work properly, all cases have to align on their side in the slot to guarantee you got all the .380. That just wont happen through rocking or shaking, You have to manually intervene and lay the stragglers over into the slots. Pro Tip: Nearly all the cases that are a close match in diameter (.38/.357, .40/10mm, .380/9mm) are a different height. You can grab a reloading block or box insert and dump handfuls of cases over it until its full and then just pick out the tall ones. This is definitely the way to go for the bigger calibers. 9mm and .380 are so short, unless you have a shallow .380 tray or insert, the plate may well be faster. If you have extra plastic inserts from .40 or .45 you could run one or two across the band saw to get a better height based sorter for shorter cased rounds. To fully separate/sort a full 5 gallon bucket probably takes 2-3 hours depending on the diversity of your range brass. We collect/store our mixed range brass in 3 lb coffee cans and each can probably takes 20-30 minutes to fully sort. If we were smart we'd probably just sort by tray color on the range and then detail sort in larger batches as we need that caliber brass to reload. FYI, This is great way for the kids to help out at the range or in the reloading room.

Description leads you to believe it comes with the 380 plate. It does not.

Been holding out buying these, saw this value pack for a good price. Got my order in and it doesn't include the 380 plate as advertised. Contacted seller (Northwoods Technologies) and the say it's Amazon's problem. They seem to be ignorant of what they are selling or are being intentionally deceptive. Buyer beware.

I added a Frankford Arsenal Quick-N-Easy Standard Media Separator as the "bottom step". I simply ground off some of the material around the handles, placed the thin metal 9mm/.380 separator @ the bottom, (it will wedge right in there like it was made for it, leaving about a 2 inch gap for the .380 cases to fall into), placed the black pan next, the blue pan on top of it, & the yellow pan on top of that. Dump in your brass. Don't shake it so much as twist & turn it side to side. It works great. All your .380 & 9mm cases will be in the black tray. Simply dump them on to the metal pan. The 9mm cases will stay on top & the .380s will fall to the bottom. Done. You can pull out the metal tray to get @ your .380 cases or do like I did & cut a small slot in the bottom of the Media Separator. Pull down on the "grate" and presto, your cases come pouring out. Mine does .45 - .40 - 9mm & .380 cases great! Can't speak for the rest. As my eyes get worse this thing gets better!

Poured about half a 5gal bucket of mixed brass into these and shook them about 10 seconds. That’s about all it took. Only ones not immediately sorted were some stuck inside each other but these things are DEFINITELY worth it if you go through a bunch of brass.

Ad says it includes the 380 shell plate. It does not.

I frequently collect abandoned brass at the range, and this set of sorting trays is absolutely invaluable for separating out the most common calibers. It works well for brass that's either clean+resized or still dirty and fire-formed. I would advise only running through a few handfuls at a time, otherwise you'll be shaking trays a LOT.There's a tendency for oddball calibers like .38 Special or .357 SIG to end up mixed in with the .40S&W tray, but these are rare and are generally easy to eyeball and separate. 7.65mm Browning (aka .32 ACP) also tends to fall through with the thoroughly-useless .22 pistol brass, but I don't particularly care for any caliber below 9mm anyways.The one complaint is that I wish the .380 tray was more than just a stamped piece of metal. I can see why plastic wouldn't do--.380 and 9mm are close enough in diameter that the natural flex of plastic would likely let EVERYTHING through--but it would be nice if the metal .380 tray was actually seated in its own basket or at least had some better grip points. Actually dealing with the flat .380 tray is a pain, to the point that I'm planning to add a couple of screws+wingnuts to make it easier to pick up.

I usually wait until I get a fair amount of mixed brass after several sessions at the range, This system makes sorting quick and easy.I was disappointed in the .380 plate, it works but not well. For me, the space between the plate and the bottom of the tray is very small. This only allows very few .380 cases to pass through. The other problem is that it is difficult to lift the tray out of the pan.To help with these problems I cut a slit in a length of 1/2' vinyl tube and fastened it around the plate with clear caulking. This allowed the plate to set higher in the pan and stopped it from slipping. I also drilled a hole in the center of the plate and attached a cabinet drawer pull to make it easy to lift the plate out. These modifications made the system work well for me. Just be aware that any modification will surely void any warranty.