cross-ref for brass weight-v-counts? Auto-sorting of mixed brass?

[yhtomit]

Sorry, that subject line is pretty ambiguous, but I wasn't coming up with a great headline.

1) Last weekend, after some unexpected scrounging at an outdoor range, I was reminded of a question that's been brewing in my head for a while: has someone on the Lazyweb created a chart which anyone could point me to which supplies an approximate round count for brass in various conditions, based on weight and / or volume?

For example: if I have a 3-gallon bucket full of .45 ACP brass, all of it dirty and with primers in, is there an easy reference that will show me this equals 1298 cases, give-or-take? (Sorry, that number is random, and No, I don't have gallons of .45 cases to either count or weigh )

Or, if I have an odd-sized container, but know the weight of the brass in there ("1.7 lbs of 9mm brass, primers removed, tumbled"), I'd like to get a result that way, too.

I know different brands of brass in a given caliber will vary in weight (and perhaps within it, too), and that dirt adds weight (though I bet not much), primers obviously do, too -- so approximation is all I'm looking for.

Now, if there *isn't* such a conversion cheatsheet, I see no reason it would be hard to make, but if there is I'd rather not reinvent the axle.

2) I like to see the inventions that people here come up with (or can point to), and I wonder if anyone's created a brass-sorting machine. There comes a point where even though my brain sees that a .40 and a .45 case are considerable different, the sorting task gets slowed down with persistent second guessing, and that applied with much greater force to sorting 9mm Luger from .380 and the occasional Makarov (of which I've found a single piece, so far ). The first handfuls are easy, it's when cartridge #498 and #499 suddenly look more similar than they should. My thought was that as a first-round sort could be done mechanically, the brain would be fresher for seeking outliers within the piles thus created.

OTOH, I'm not sure if a homemade device could be precise enough to make such fine sorting choices anyhow. (At least not among the various off-by-one-mm 9mm varieties.)

I could imagine a multi-layer shaking screen something like is used by some archaeologists, and I wonder if anyone is using such a thing. (It would take away the pirate-greed pleasure of sorting the treasure by hand, though ...)

Do such things exists? I don't personally need one, since my ammo gathering is sporadic and usually doesn't get more than a few handfuls anyhow, I'm really just curious.

timothy

EDIT: attached below a "before and after" shot of a surprisingly small total volume of brass (didn't weigh it); the "round mound" picture has everything but the much smaller number of rifle cartridges (though the 30-30 was fired in a handgun -- it's not in the pile).

Notes:
1) Can anyone identify the (loaded) rifle cartridge?
2) The "rejects" pile includes mostly 9mm, .40 and .45 cases with dented case mouths or which just look tired. I don't shoot high volumes and am starting reloading at a ridiculously slow and paranoid pace, so I have an embarrassment of riches, and am perfectly happy to reject brass that doesn't look nicely clean

 

[ReloaderFred]

I made an arrangement for cleaning the dirt and debris from brass with 1/4" mesh wire screen, sometimes known as construction cloth. I made a basket that fits into an 8"x11" cake pan and I pour random lots of brass into the screen and shake it back and forth to remove the residue. It also makes it easier to hand sort the brass.

As for a chart of weights for brass, I've just weighed 100 rounds of each caliber and then multiply that weight by 10 to come up with an average weight for a thousand rounds. When I sell brass, I do it by weight, since counting would take forever. Here is a weight I've come up with for 9mm brass that has been cleaned and still has the primers in:

1. 9mm brass = 9 pounds, 6 ounces per thousand

Someplace, I've written down the weights for .38 Special, .45 acp and .40 S&W, but I can't locate them right now.

Hope this helps.

Fred

 

[yhtomit]

Fred:

Hey, thanks! I figured I'm not the only one to have wanted to know the weight / 1000 figure More than 9 lbs, eh? That's a lot more than I would have guessed, actually. Makes the recycling bucket seem like an ever-smarter idea, too, at the current (and, I suspect, future) price of brass!

Depending on the day, I sometimes toss in .22 casings (mostly so I don't have that gleam distracting me as I seek the reloadable ones) -- I bet your mesh system would drop those right out, which would be nice.

timothy