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 which leave behind holes. 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.

People rely on air-drying and kiln-drying to acclimate their wood.

However, they need to do moisture testing to check acclimation to make sure that the wood is properly dried.

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 discovered different ways to measure wood moisture without pins. They did this by conducting electromagnetic testing with the help of non-invasive sensor pads. This was done via radio waves.

Wagner Meters had been making In-line meters since the mid 1960s. However, Wagner Meters still wanted to make a smaller, more convenient version of hand held meters for people to bring with them to job sites that would be much faster and easier to use than the meters that were on the market at that time. And so, by the 1990s, Wagner Meters created handheld pinless meters which helped pinless moisture meters become more commercially available.

It was easy for sawmill operators and woodworkers to use. All they had to do was place the meter’s sensor pad on top of a piece of wood. From there, the sensor would send an electromagnetic signal through the wood. This would indicate how much moisture it contained.

Wagner Meters developed 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 to ensure top accuracy.

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 are 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 even comes with an on-demand calibrator. This returns the meter to factory settings, allowing you to reach peak accuracy any time you want to be sure that the meter is accurately calibrated. There’s no need to send the meter back to the factory for calibration.

Pinless meters also use large sensor pads. This enables them to get more widespread readings. Meanwhile, pin meters can only measure the moisture levels between their pins.

Speed and efficiency

Pinless options are also faster and more efficient than meters with pins.

Pin meters only give 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.

But even without breaking the pins, inserting them into the wood can be time-consuming. This is because moisture meters can only record one section of the wood at a time. 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.

Sounds pretty tedious, right?

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 needs to reach for it to acclimate.
• Dual-depth measuring capabilities: Some pinless meters measure down to ¼ of an inch, while others measure down to ¾ of an inch. The shallow meters are a great option for thinner boards, while deep ones are good for thicker boards. But some meters can do both, giving you more measurement options if you’re working with boards of varying 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: It 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: It 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: It makes it easy to check the moisture content of furniture without causing them any damage. 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 detecting high-moisture areas and leaks. It allows you to locate and fix these 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 even offer a relative mode. This mode can help you detect areas of higher and lower moisture in various materials like drywall, carpet, vinyl, and laminate flooring.

This mode doesn’t give you moisture content readings. But it can help you understand how moist a certain material is compared to other materials of its type.

The Investment of Pinless Moisture Meters

When you buy pinless moisture meters you’re investing in high-quality moisture testing.

Read “Finding the Best Wood Moisture Meter of 2024” to learn how to find the right pinless meter for you.

Visit our shop to see our full selection of moisture meters.

Jason Wright

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.