For the last 6 years I've been working as an environmental biologist for a large non-profit educating organic farmers in the art of seed saving. I've been challenged with cleaning so many different kinds of seed - from Amaranth to Zucchini - you name it, I've probably made an attempt at cleaning it.
The most challenging seeds I've ever had to clean are calendula and silver dollar plant. Calendula is had just for the shape. Plus the chaff is roughly the same weight as the seed. When cleaning calendula - dry your flowers to the "bone"... use a 2 inch deep photo developing pan (or something similar with a little weight to it) with a piece of corregated floor mat fit into the bottom of the pan. Make a threshing "float" (similar to a grout float in size and shape) out of wood. Attach the same corregated floor mat material to the "face" of the float. You'll put the dried calendula flowers in the tray on top of the mat and rub the float across the flowers - monitor your pressure as not to crush the seeds.
This method works for a variety of crops (onion, lettuce, dill, dried beans, buckwheat, etc) and if you are only doing a small amount of seed - this can save a significant amount of time when it comes to threshing. Once all the seed is separated from the chaff, I recommend running the seed through a screen or two. Ideally, you'd want to run the crop through one screen just barely big 
enough so that only the seed and particles smaller could pass through. Deposit the larger chaff into your handy-dandy compost. After that, you'd run the remaining seed and chaff through a screen where the openings are just small enough so that only particles smaller than the seed can escape. In a perfect world, you'd be left with beautiful clean seed at this point - although most of the time (here in the real world) we would still require more cleaning - usually winnowing or some other sort of weight separation. In the photograph, you will see native women winnowing wheat.
enough so that only the seed and particles smaller could pass through. Deposit the larger chaff into your handy-dandy compost. After that, you'd run the remaining seed and chaff through a screen where the openings are just small enough so that only particles smaller than the seed can escape. In a perfect world, you'd be left with beautiful clean seed at this point - although most of the time (here in the real world) we would still require more cleaning - usually winnowing or some other sort of weight separation. In the photograph, you will see native women winnowing wheat.If anyone ever has a question about seed saving, feel free to drop me a line
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