I've been running the oil for a year at a lick and checking the pleats every time I change the filter (and clean al the goop off the smagnet) for 4 years now.   I do this every 2nd or 3rd oil change (yeah, I am getting slacker'n shite about the filter -- I know).

The VAST MAJORITY of the trash caught is ferrous, and it is very very fine and it is all being caught by the magnetic force fields.  My plug magnet will give up some slivers or edges of a gear dog sometimes (rarely), the big magnet always gives up lots of mush that has no texture to it.

I keep posting what the filter itself catches, and that is only a very few bits of what looks like gasket sealer film edges.   Since I clean the filter thoroughly to recover all the stuff it catches, I have been reusing the same filter after the brake parts cleaner dries (my official excuse being it is being controlled as a stable element in the years long ongoing experiment).

Take my wife's big clear glass potato salad mixing bowl, put the filter hole up in the bottom on a piece of aluminium block stock, then pour a gush flow of gasoline into the hole letting it goosh out through the filter.

Then I take a straw equipped bottle of Brake Parts Cleaner and blow the filter pleats out from the inside of the hole, then I run down the creases in the outer pleats at a strong angle pointing down to knock loose any crease held bits & pieces.   The glass bowl now has all the gas and all the BPC and whatever they carried out of the filter.

I remove the block of aluminium and leave the glass bowl outside for over a day to let it settle good and to evaporate most of the gas/BPC.   Then I carefully pour off the bulk of the separated (mostly clear) liquid solvents, preserving any sediments in the big glass bowl.  

I then take a small glass ice cream bowl and flush the sediments from the big glass bowl into the small glass bowl using BPC.  This gives me a very small concentrated sample of solvent with everything that backflushed out of the filter contained within it.

I then take a magnet and see what part of the 4-5 tablespoons of liquified goop is ferrous.  Most of it is.  I let the little bowl evap to nothing, then I finger through the remainder for anything I can feel.  Tiny sliver edges of gasket sealer is most of what is left.

So, the moral of the story is -- drain plug magnet catches any slivers or chunks that exist from clashing the gear dogs.  Main magnet catches the vast bulk of all finer ferrous wear dust.  Filter pleats catch mostly ferrous wear dust and a very few bits of gasket/gasket sealer.

I feel that a supermagnet augmented filter system gets all the non silica dust crap out of your oil ongoing, with the bulk of the stuff sticking to the big magnet.  The filter paper pleats stops bits & pieces of gasket/gasket sealer.   NOTHING STOPS THE FINE SILCA PARTICLES (dust) SO YOU HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR OIL TO GET THE SILICA BUILD UP OUT OF THE ENGINE.

The oil filter is dry and clean by then, so back in she goes .....

 
Yeah, and I catch bloody hell if I don't clean it all up good and put it away before she notices I've used it, too.

A wipe with my dirty shop towel jest doesn't cut it.

She's caught me before using a sniff test -- BPC has an odour to it.

Nowadays, I get it as clean as I can, then I nestle the two bowls and put them in the wash side of the sink and fill them up with hot soapy water for her to find.

The hot soapy water disguises the BPC smell and once's she's washed them and put them up I am golden from that point on ....  she can't blame me for her lousy wash job.


  ..... and if you think this drill fools anybody, you ain't ever been married.  She bloody well KNOWS why the bowls are sitting there full of hot soapy water for her to wash one more time yet again.  

It's not like she didn't see her glass bowl out on the driveway evaporating for the last day or so ....