Do this to separate the pins. Get a Frankford Arsenal Standard Media Separator; Nine Bucks. It's nothing but a colander but it's deep and fits down inside a 5 gal bucket much further than a standard cooking colander. Dump your brass and pins into it and stir everything around. That will dump 95% of the pins into the bucket, leaving the brass. Then shake it up and down for 30 seconds. The fact that it's deep means the pins that remain don't jump out and get away. That's it. Now your brass is pin free and the pins are in the bucket.rmist said:
Dump the brass into a second bucket and wash it. Then give it a good shake in the media separator, give it a spin in a salad spinner if you like, dump it out on a towel, and then dry it with a heat gun, the sun, in a mesh bag trapped in your clothes dryer door, or immediately anneal the brass. That will finish the drying job.
Your pins are now in the bottom of the bucket. Pour off most of the dirty water slowly enough so that the pins remain in the bucket. Then wash the pins, dump the water and pins into a kitchen sieve. Do this over a second bucket 'cause the typical household sieve will pass a few pins.
Dump the sieve full of pins into your media storage jug. Some will remain, so pick them up with the Frankford Arsenal Media Transfer Magnet for Stainless Steel Media (Twelve Bucks). It will also fish out of the bucket the few pins that pass through the sieve or that jumped out into your sink.
It takes longer to write about this than to do it. Bottom line: With the correct deep colander and a plunger type magnet, you can control your SS media without any problems and in a short amount of time.
