Metal Detector for milling trees

[Neil Bosdet]

Hi all,

Our guild has a wood reclamation program and we're milling trees often. Went through 4 Wood Mizer blades this past weekend with deep metal in old oak. It was more than 4" below the surface. Just kept finding more and more. We have the Wood Wizard (the larger one) but it doesn't get deep enough. Any of you have a recommendation for a better/stronger detector? Cost the 4 blades necessitates getting something decent. We can't keep paying our sawyer for blades.

Thanks, Neil

[Richard Coers]

Unless you are milling 4" slabs, the use of the woodwizard is enough if used on every pass. The biggest indicator of metal in oak is black stain on the end of the log. That's a huge caution sign!

[John TenEyck]

Blades are the cost of milling residential trees, especially on butt logs. As Richard said, if you see black stain on the end of the log you know with almost 100% certainty there is metal above the stain. I use a cheap metal detector from HF. It finds metal up to about 1-1/2" deep. When milling 8/4 and more, it's Russian roulette. I high end detector might get you twice the depth, but I'm not aware of any that will reliably find nails 4" deep. And even if you can detect them, then what? Do you scrap the log for firewood? Do you try to cut it out? For high value lumber like walnut and white oak, I just mill it and swallow the cost of the blades. The 144" Woodmiser ones I use cost about $25 each to my door. I don't know how much you are paying the sawyer for blades, but there's your benchmark. My rule of thumb is 2 ruined blades in the same log is the limit. It's firewood after that.

John

[Jimmy Harris]

What you're looking for is probably not cost effective. And they bring other problems. Like one that's powerful enough to get that deep, is also going to be sensitive enough that it's going to give a lot of false positives.

[Daniel O'Neill]

The only thing I can think of is a property pin finder. You can adjust the sensitivity quite a bit. It will take a good amount of practice because it may grab the mill itself if you have it set too sensitive or pointed in the wrong direction. With this type I've found 16d nails 12" in the ground. The nail itself is harder to find because it's mixed into the dirt.