I like the utility of the Garrett Pointer, could come in handy for many uses.
In the shop I have an older Wizzard-III which has saved my cutters many times. Calibrated once an dnever have had to readjust it since.

 

Both units cost around $145.00.

Wow... that is a lot of beans for something so simple. I have been detecting for a couple decades now, and my pinpointer is an old HF (Cen-Tech) handheld that i picked up for something like $9. Unfortunately, they don't sell them any longer, but you can still get them on the bay. I have had a few opportunities to go out with some buddies, and compared it to a bounty hunter pinpointer and a Garrett. The Garrett was the worst of the three. The Cen-Tech surprisingly out performed both of them. I also use it to find metal crap in lumber and it hasn't let me down yet. The only thing I did to it was to seal the antenna portion to prevent moisture and sand from getting into it, and replace the 9v battery in it every couple of years. I know this isn't going to help much, but it does seem to indicate that the Garrett is way overpriced for what it is. YMMV.

Cheers,
Brad

 

Thanks for the information Mr Unix [now, I secretly hate you and, now, am going to find my felt tips and draw [REALLY] mean drawings of you].

Seriously, have you test driven yours in the shop? I really am disappointed I didn't have an idea of how well pin pointers work.

I've heard good and bad about every one out there, including yours. I grit my teeth and went with this version on the advice of several who were yet deep into detecting.

Like I say, I test drove it on a bunch of items, including old furniture I was restoring. Even tiny nails I knew were there showed up. They showed up with the WIZARD, but not without the fight I mentioned.


I spent hundreds of hours metal detecting back in the sixties. We had the nice Whites, including the suitcase model that would get down feet (I always became fearful when my dad brought that one out). I and my brother were THE pinpointers. I loved those days.

My parents co-owned an antique-bottle-rock shop so our summers were spent in ghost town (Pacific Northwet, Canada, Idaho, Montana, WArshington and Oregon), looking for dumps, chasing thunder eggs and such.

I learned a great deal about history that would never have been shared with kids. Things like why we found so many Palmers Perfume bottles (baths were rare, but Paler's wasn't, and the number of bottles suggested the success of the "houses of the evening," and the mining camps in general.

We never found our teapots full of gold, but we found thousands of dollars worth of bottles and other things. One of my favorite was a brass and bronze whistle I found in Phoenix, Candida (a ghost, mining town). My dad cleaned it up (it cleaned up well) and with a compressor on it, it would, definitely tell everyone it was starting/lunch/quitting time.


OH, and I cannot argue the Garrett is not overpriced. I knew it going in, but I wasn't going to buy twice.

 

Seriously, have you test driven yours in the shop?

Yes, as I mentioned... I've used it in the shop quite a bit and it hasn't let me down yet. I work with a lot of reclaimed and pallet wood and it's found a lions share of embedded metal that I would have never seen otherwise.

The only negative I can say about the HF unit is that it's sensitivity changes with temperature. I used to do a lot of detecting on the beach (Florida east coast) and noticed it when I would leave it in the sun for a while. Simple solution was to keep it in my pocket when not in use so it wouldn't be exposed to the sun. And fortunately, it's easy to adjust the sensitivity, so even that wasn't too much of an inconvenience.

Cheers,
Brad

 

Had a couple of the Lil wizard units. Neither worked reliably without constant fiddling. Tossed 'em.

 

The Wizard is so finicky I never trust it. I picked it up cheap at a garage sale so no big loss.

I've had better luck with this Zircon MetalliScanner m40. It is intended as a stud finder but works well to find metal in most boards. IIRC, it auto calibrates as long as you hit the button with no metal nearby. I have to make sure that nothing metal like fasteners in the bench top are nearby when scanning. On thicker boards, I usually test this Zircon by putting a nail underneath the board to make sure that it is detecting all the way through. When it doesn't, I just scan both sides.

EDIT to add: Another thing that I like is that if you use the end of the sensor, it helps you pinpoint the location of the offending metal.

 

The Wizard is so finicky I never trust it. I picked it up cheap at a garage sale so no big loss.

I've had better luck with this Zircon MetalliScanner m40. It is intended as a stud finder but works well to find metal in most boards. IIRC, it auto calibrates as long as you hit the button with no metal nearby. I have to make sure that nothing metal like fasteners in the bench top are nearby when scanning. On thicker boards, I usually test this Zircon by putting a nail underneath the board to make sure that it is detecting all the way through. When it doesn't, I just scan both sides.

(Image of Zircon MetalliScanner m40, see above)

EDIT to add: Another thing that I like is that if you use the end of the sensor, it helps you pinpoint the location of the offending metal.

Some Zircon stud finders are not suitable as woodworking metal detectors. We have had two different "top of the line" Zircon deluxe stud finders over the years. One was replaced by Zircon with their latest model when ours failed. Both have four settings to find basic studs, deep studs, electrical wires, and metal. Neither of them looks like the MetalliScanner m40 shown above.

I tested them both as metal detectors for wood.
Results: Neither Zircon stud finder could find metal in wood. They did not work. They could not find nails or staples where you could see the exposed metal nailhead or staple on the surface of the wood.

I salvage wood from old furniture, but not pallets. I disassemble the furniture pieces and harvest the wood into boards, woodturning blanks, etc. I use observation and experience to find unwanted metal. If you pay attention to how the furniture was designed and built, the places to look for metal should be fairly obvious and easy to identify. I do not have a metal detector. In the last ten years or so, I cut through two nails; I know what that sounds like. Neither nail triggered the saw's safety mechanism. I saw no nicks on the blade teeth from the nail cuts. Honestly, they were "non-events". After a detailed forensic analysis of the cut nails, my initial conclusion (read: best guess) for both was "furniture assembler was testing their nail gun in a hidden place after a misfire or reloading nails."

 

The one I showed above is only a metal detector. It does not have the other sensors that locate the edge of studs behind the wall board and works much better than the Wizard 2 that I have for finding metal in a board. It can detect a finish nail underneath a 2-by board, though it probably will not detect a small pin nail for example through that thickness. The larger the piece of metal the deeper it seems to be able to detect it. For thicker boards, I just make sure that I scan from both sides. It has been reliable for finding pins and brads in 3/4 stock.

 

I need to get another detector. I had 2 wizzards, I had bought a large one and at the time got a little Wizzard packaged with it for free. They worked OK, but after about 3 years both of them died...completely, and within 2 weeks of each other. I decided then i would buy another one of their units and i have looked at the Garret from tie to time but so far haven't pulled the trigger.