Upgrade to Nondestructive Testing: Choose Pinless Wood Moisture Meters
Accurate wood moisture testing is necessary for minimizing the effects of moisture damage.
But what’s the point of using a pin meter that requires you to damage your wood in the first place?
It might be fine if you’re measuring the moisture of firewood. You’re going to end up burning it anyway, so what’s an extra pinhole or two? But turning your floorboards and latest woodworking projects into Swiss cheese? Not so much.
Fortunately, you can avoid this by using a pinless moisture meter.
These meters don’t require you to drive pins into your wood and leave holes behind. You can simply press the meter against the wood to get your reading. Keep reading to learn more about this non-destructive technology and what it can do for you.
Specifically, you’ll learn:
- The development of nondestructive testing
- Advantages of pinless moisture meters
- Why pinless moisture meters are a great investment
Let’s get started.
The Development of Nondestructive Testing
Pin meters must be inserted into the wood to get a reading via electrical current flow while a pinless meter can be placed on top of the wood to get a reading using an electromagnetic field.
Wood is air-dried or kiln-dried before it’s used, and then it needs to acclimate to where it will be used.
Moisture testing is how you check that the wood was properly dried and has acclimated.
One of the first moisture testing techniques was resistance technology. It detects the electrical resistance of the wood by sending an electrical current through two pins. Because water is conductive, the amount of electrical resistance indicates how much moisture the wood contains.
Though these pin meters are fairly accurate, the process of using them is slow and tedious. They involve driving pins into the wood to get a reading, and the pins leave behind holes.
Fortunately, researchers found ways to measure wood moisture without pins, using sensor pads that send electromagnetic (radio-frequency) signals into the wood.
Wagner Meters had been making in-line meters for lumber mills since the mid-1960s, and it introduced its first pinless wood moisture meter, the L600, in 1980. In the early 1990s, Wagner developed smaller handheld pinless meters for wood flooring and woodworking customers, meters that were much faster and easier to use on the job than what was on the market at the time. That helped make pinless moisture meters widely available.
They were easy for sawmill operators and woodworkers to use. They placed the meter’s sensor pad on a piece of wood, and the sensor sent an electromagnetic signal into the wood to measure how much moisture it contained.
Over the years, Wagner Meters improved these meters by:
- Increasing moisture meter accuracy
- Making the meter less sensitive to temperature
- Upgrading the meter from analog to digital
- Creating IntelliSense™, a technology that minimizes the effect surface moisture has on Wagner’s meters
The industry is still investigating new testing methods. But pinless moisture meters are the current standard of non-destructive moisture testing.
Advantages of Pinless Moisture Meters
The Orion® 950 comes with its own On-Demand Calibrator for accurate readings.
Let’s explore what makes pinless moisture meters so effective.
Accuracy
Pinless moisture meters have a high level of accuracy.
The accuracy of pin meters can be thrown off by changes in temperature and the chemical composition of wood. Meanwhile, the accuracy of pinless meters is sensitive to wood density.
High-quality pinless meters, like the Orion 950, come with a species setting that allows you to adjust the meter for the density of different wood species. It also comes with an On-Demand Calibrator, so you can check and recalibrate the meter yourself whenever you want to be sure it’s accurate. There’s no need to send it back to the factory for calibration.
Pinless meters also use large sensor pads, so each reading covers a wider area. Pin meters only measure the moisture between their pins.
Speed and efficiency
Pinless options are also faster and more efficient than meters with pins.
Pin meters only give a reading once you’ve driven the meter’s pins into the wood. This can take a while, especially if you’re driving pins through hardwood. They can be difficult to insert. Sometimes the pins can even bend or break.
Even when the pins don’t break, inserting them takes time, and each reading covers only one small spot. To get a full understanding of how much moisture an entire piece of wood contains, you’ll need to take measurements in different parts of the board.
When you’re using pin meters, that means leaving behind more holes and spending more time driving the pins.
With pinless meters, you don’t have to worry about any of that.
You can get a reading by pressing your meter against a piece of wood. Want to measure another part of the board? Move your meter to that spot. It takes seconds.
On top of that, some of these meters have extra features that make them more convenient.
These features can include:
- A user-friendly interface: Many meters come with a backlit screen and digital display that makes them easy to read.
- Bluetooth® connectivity: Some work with Bluetooth to send the moisture data from your meter to an app on your phone.
- Apps for storage and sharing: Some meters come with apps that store your moisture data. They can keep you from losing your data and provide a convenient way for you to review your data all in one place. They can also create reports, making it easy for you to share moisture information with clients.
- The ability to calculate EMC, temperature, and relative humidity: Some meters can give you temperature and relative humidity readings. Some even use this data to calculate the equilibrium moisture content (EMC), the moisture level your wood will settle at in its surroundings.
- Dual-depth measuring capabilities: Some pinless meters measure down to ¼ inch, while others measure down to ¾ inch. Shallow readings are a great option for thinner boards, and deep readings are good for thicker boards. Dual-depth meters can do both, which helps if you work with boards of different thicknesses.
Non-destructiveness
Pin meters leave behind unsightly pinholes in your wood.
One of the best things about pinless moisture meters is that they’re a non-destructive testing method. There are several instances where you might not want to damage your wood:
- You’re trying to sell a piece of wood: Customers are looking to buy wood without blemishes or defects. You could discourage a sale or decrease the value of your wood by creating holes in it.
- You’re trying to install a hardwood floor: Clients may be uncomfortable with you putting holes in their hardwood floors. Patching the holes will also cost you more time and effort.
- You want to sell a woodworking project you just made: Buyers might turn away from the pinholes in your tables, chairs, and bookshelves. That’s why you’ll want to use a pinless meter instead.
The non-damaging aspect of these meters makes them ideal for various projects.
Multiple purposes
Pinless meters have a multitude of uses.
They can be used for:
- Woodworking: A pinless meter can help you determine whether the wood has acclimated enough for you to build with it. It can also check the moisture level of your finished product, all without creating holes.
- Flooring: A pinless meter can check the moisture of hardwood floors without damaging them. It can tell you when your floorboards have acclimated enough for them to be safely installed.
- Furniture manufacturing: A pinless meter makes it easy to check the moisture content of furniture parts without damaging them. It can tell you when your wood pieces have acclimated enough that they can be made into a chair or desk without warping. It can also detect moisture damage after the furniture has been built, helping you locate it and fix moisture problems as soon as possible.
- Building inspection, construction, and restoration: Pinless meters are great for finding high-moisture areas and leaks, so you can locate and fix problems quickly.
- The creation of musical instruments: Moisture can affect musical instruments too. It can cause them to swell or warp in ways that distort their sound. A pinless meter can detect moisture problems all without driving pins into the wood that create unsightly holes. It helps you locate the problem quickly, which means you can get to fixing it faster.
Some meters, including the Orion line, also offer a relative measurement mode for non-wood building materials such as drywall.
This mode doesn’t give you moisture content readings, but it shows you where the same material is wetter or drier, so you can compare areas.
The Investment of Pinless Moisture Meters
When you buy a pinless moisture meter, you’re investing in high-quality moisture testing.
Read our guide to finding the best wood moisture meter for help choosing the right pinless meter for you.
Jason Wright, Business Development Specialist for New Products, joined Wagner Meters in 2019. He comes to Wagner with over 35 years of experience in the flooring industry.
Last updated on October 13th, 2026
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