Pin-Free Wood Moisture Measurement Meter

Carol T.: This was easy to use. And, like I said, takes the guesswork out of whether you can start your project - or continue after a short rain.

United States on Oct 09, 2023

cko: Product are ok

Australia on Aug 17, 2023

proto57: I read many reviews on Amazon and elsewhere about this and other moisture meters, of all costs and types, before choosing this one. The only major bad review on this one seemed to be that it would go out of calibration, and that it was hard to re-calibrate. I disagree on both counts: While calibration does involve removing a battery, and holding a button while re-inserting it, I didn't find that all that difficult to do.

Also, I don't find that it goes out of calibration all that much. I've used this several dozen times so far, and it only went out of calibration once! (you know it did when it blinks "0.0"). I suspect... not positive yet... but I suspect that the reason it may go out is because people turn it on while against the wood. I always start it in the air, away from anything solid.

I also like that this unit has a density setting for different types of wood. I don't have another meter, or any other way to check the accuracy, but I suspect it is very good because the readings make sense: For instance, freshly cut wood being between 25% and 30% moisture, and furniture in my house being between 3% and 8%. And my stacked and seasoned firewood... cherry... comes...

United States on Feb 17, 2023

Marcel P. Lemay: I was pretty excited to get a pinless moisture meter. I know it's not a $500 moisture meter, so I wasn't expecting perfect function but something that works and gives me a general idea of how much moisture is in the wood. When I first got it I turned it on and proceeded to measure the moisture in some walnut thats been in my shop for about a month and had been kiln dried. My pinned moisture meter was showing about 10% moisture which is considered dry in my unheated garage. This only showed 5%. So I calibrated it and now it shows about 8 - 10% on the same wood. Pretty close!

Calibrating it is sort of an exercise in reading and following the directions. It's not intuitive at all. I recommend keeping the directions in the case. There's a pouch to hold them but the manual was a bit too long to fit in, so I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the top and bottom margins off the manual so that it fit into the pouch folded in half the long way.

Actually reading the moisture levels is super simple. Setting it for wood density is also really simple. But don't lose the instructions.

United States on Feb 12, 2023

Amazon Customer: This is a fantastic addition to my wood turning arsenal
I can take a skim cut off of a piece of my wood turning and see if it will warp.
so i can make a decision to rough turn it and let it dry or finish turn it that is if the moisture content is low.
It removes the chance of scraping the turning project.
Saves time and effort and money.
Thanks

Canada on Oct 01, 2022

erivest: Pin-less moisture meters have the reputation to be less precise than pinned ones. I have a serious doubt that this device is not a laboratory precision instrument, compared with those that sell hundreds of dollars. Now, qualifying its precision is impossible to me since I don't have any known precision comparaison device. I just hope that it is accurate enough to let me know that bowl blanks turned from green wood are stabilizing. I guess this is the best to expect for a device of that price. To date, drying process progression seems to be coherent.

The instruction leaflet is quite limited and badly written, hard to understand.

On the other hand, I deeply regret that the company doesn't supply an accurate chart of settings for the density scale instead of providing only a limited species setting chart. They didn't answer my inquiry, not even to tell me that they got my email and would or wouldn't provide the requested information. This is bad customer service.

Canada on Dec 29, 2020

Yann: Un outil relativement efficace pour mesurer la teneur en humidité du bois sous de multiples formes (huilé, vernis, plané ou brut de sciage). L'absence de pointes à faire pénétrer dans le bois évite tout bris de surface. Les concepteurs de cet instrument me laissent par contre un peu perplexe. Pourquoi une densité de 3 comme défaut ? Une densité par défaut de 1 serait nettement plus appropriée. Pourquoi une gamme de densité allant jusqu'à 9 ? Quel matériau ayant une densité de 9 (ou même de 3) peut de façon courante intéresser quelqu'un du point de vue de la teneur en humidité ? Une gamme de densité de 0 à 2 serait à mon avis nettement plus intéressante. Enfin, une critique que je répète pour l'avoir déjà vu concerne la procédure de calibration. Comme je commence toute série de mesures par une calibration, la procédure qui consiste à devoir enlever une batterie pour être en mesure de calibrer l'appareil pourrait me porter sur les nerfs à la longue.

Canada on Oct 18, 2019

Alan G.: I bought this to test my hardwood floor planks when I was installing them. It told me very believable numbers which compared within 1% of a friend's professional pin style moisture meter. It is very repeatable and pretty stable readings that don't bounce all over the place. And the good calibration (temperature and wood density) ensures a pretty good accuracy. So for a modest price you get a pretty accurate and very easy to use meter.

When I was trying to decide which of the many meters to buy, I did a Google search as follows:
"md918 moisture meter review"
I found a comparison of 3 pinless moisture meters on YouTube that compares Wagner MMC 205 (professional and expensive), General Tools MMD5NP (similar price to this one), and Dr. Meter MD918. The video on YouTube is called "Moisture Meter Accuracy Test - Wagner vs General vs Dr. Meter". It is definitely worth doing a search and watching it because you will be shocked how poorly the General Tools one does, and that is probably one of the meters you are considering. The reviewer's findings were quite representative of what I found also. I can't provide a link because it would break the Amazon review...

Canada on Oct 14, 2018

nibbles: Well first it's really great for a few days, dead on balls accurate and everything makes sense. Then you do something awful one morning and it starts acting crazy. How after 4 days of consistent results is the thing suddenly telling me my 20% wood is 44%, no wait 45% moisture content. Wait what did *I* do. I just came out here and turned it on. I mean I haven't even finished this coffee. Well guess what, I placed it down 2 inches closer to the middle of the board than I ever had.

You can place three meters side by side on a 2x8 of GRN lumber, and they could tell you very different readings.
You can place the same meter in those three locations and consistently see those readings showing the MC varies across the width of a board.
And it can vary quite a lot.

So let's examine placing one meter in those three locations, then repeating that at 1 foot intervals along the entire length of the board. Note the values on my phone. That tells me what's really going on inside the wood, and you might be shocked. One side of the face of my 2x8 was at 14%, the middle of the face was 44%, and the other side of the same face was 17.5%. So much for my board being under 20% and...

United States on Aug 11, 2018