Building a Homemade Metal Detector

Tip! Coin Hunting or 'Coin Shooting' as it's often called, is not only very fun to do, but it can easily be very profitable. Finding just one gold piece or any rare coin can easily pay for the cost of the metal detector.

A homemade metal detector is very easy to build. There are lots of diagrams and plans available in the net that can give you some helpful tips. However, there is a better way to start your homemade metal detector. Buy the cheapest metal detector and then dissemble it, change the parts that you desire and then put it back together. Purchasing new part is less expensive rather than buying an expensive metal detector.

Metal detector consists of control box, search coil and a shaft. The control box contains a microprocessor that coordinates the activities, a speaker and batteries. The search coil is a large coil of wire that is the round end of metal detector. The shaft which comes off with a disk allows the detector to be held parallel to the ground.

First we must have the three main parts of the metal detector. These are the oscillators or two electronic devices; one is using the search coil, a mixer for combining oscillators and a power amplifier for the speaker. A scrap radio can also be used as an amplifier for the speaker.

Now the parts are ready and we can start assembling your homemade metal detector. The first step is to build the search coil. Cut out a wooden form having 12-inch diameter. Wrap around insulated wire around the form 20 times and then attach it to a wooden handle. You can build the metal detector electronics in a small plastic box; just make sure that it would be waterproof for a longer life. Place the batteries in one box and put the electronics into another box. And then attach the spare radio which was used as an amp for the speaker at the top of the handle.

Connect the electronics of metal detector and make the correct circuit using a metal solder and soldering rod. You can use a plastic sheet to map out the circuit board. Drill holes where the component wires will go and then solder the component ends. Then, connect it to the wire underneath the board and place it in the waterproof box.

To build the search coil or the oscillator, use a few resistor, a transistor and capacitor and then connect it to the coil. Use the station tuning knob in the scrap radio wired it across the coil for the tuning capacitor so that you can adjust the frequency of the detector. And then build the second oscillator but this one has a smaller search coil. Use the coil from spare radio.

Tip! Choosing the best metal detector is a bit complicated. There are two things that you must consider. First, you must be sure that you get the correct specifications that will suit your needs. And second, you must get the best quality and not those imitations.

Then build the mixer circuit. It electronically combines signal from the small and large coil to be able to detect the differences between the two. It generates a signal that you will eventually hear from the speaker. The tone will change once it has detected a buried metal and it will set as your indicator in metal detector.

And lastly, connect and wired up all the circuits and batteries and also make sure all the wires and other pieces are correctly wired and connected to each other. Then test your homemade metal detector.

To use it, connect the battery and then adjust the volume on the speaker amplifier. Adjust the knob on the search coil until you hear a sound from the speaker. Once the search coil detects a metal the sound from speaker will change that indicates a buried metal.