Simon C

Long shot I know, but does anyone know anything about them??? Apart from they detect stuff

I'm looking at getting 1 to search for my lost arrows, so will need to detect steel and alloy.

Cheers

MrShades

Get anything - the cheapest you can get from Maplins will do the job.

I bought the cheapest from Maplins last year to clear a patch of gravel by my garage of nails / screws - as the £25 metal detector was significantly cheaper than ANOTHER puncture. I was quite surprised at how small the pieces were that it'd find, and how good it was for £25.

Obviously if you're searching for valuable metal then you want fancy discriminators and stuff - but for what you want a quick, cheap job from Maplins would more than suffice.

This should easily do what you want: Beginner?s Metal Detector : Metal Detectors : Maplin

Shades

Simon C

How small is small? The alloy bands are 1cm in diameter an 1mm thickness.

MrShades

I can get my cheap thing out and test it on something similar - say a small spring washer, is that small enough?

How deep in the ground do you think they are likely to be buried?

Simon C

I'd say up to 6 inches, that test will do nicely Cheers

PaulC72

I know they beep, we have one but it couldnt find the lost hole for the washing line so I had to put in another one.

MrShades

Right, having promised a "spring washer" test - I couldn't find one...

So - a selection of other small, metallic odds-and-sods were gathered:



...along with my detector (had to put it together again as I'd put it back in the box "as new")



(OK it's 29.99 rather than 24.99 - but I think it was on special offer at the time (it is now, reduced from 39.99!) - either way, it was cheap enough)

The specs for it here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=45964 give a "detection depth" of 16cm (about 6 inches), and I'd say that was probably about right for the larger items shown above (1p, 5p and large flat washer).

The other items were all detected, EXCEPT for that stupidly small washer - which it practically wouldn't pick up (it had to be touching the detector head and smack in the middle of it!) - though the depth of detection got less dependant on the size of piece of metal... so the nail was about 5cm or so rather than three times that for the larger stuff.

If you're seriously looking for 6 inches of detection then this may well do what you want dependant on the amount of metal in the arrow tip/ring - Take an arrow into Maplins with you and mess about with the display models and see if it's worthwhile... that's what I did with a small screw!

Have fun...

Shades