Never lose items to chest spillover again. Complete engineering tutorial on building tileable 1-wide item sorters, calculating 8-game-tick hopper throughput, and locking hoppers with redstone torches.
Build a 1-wide vertical slice: Top hopper points sideways into a Comparator. The comparator outputs into 2 redstone dust on top of solid blocks, running down into a redstone repeater facing a solid block that powers a redstone torch directly below the middle hopper.
The redstone torch powers the hopper beneath your filter hopper, locking it in place so items cannot drain until the comparator detects a signal strength of 2 (triggered at exactly 42 items).
In the top filter hopper, place 41 of your desired sorting item in the far-left slot. In the remaining 4 slots, place 1 uniquely renamed stick or dirt block (e.g. 'Blocker_Key').
A single hopper transfers 2.5 items per second (8 game ticks per item). To sort a double chest containing 3,456 items, allocate 23 minutes of continuous processing or install a dual-hopper hopper-minecart unloader to halve the duration to 11.5 minutes.
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Standard comparator hopper sorters only handle stackable items (items that stack to 64 or 16). For non-stackables, you must use an Allay water stream sorting system or armor stand dispenser filters.
Non-filter items bypass locked filter hoppers completely and continue down the ice stream or hopper line into an overflow chest placed at the end of the sorting hall.
