Velleman's CS400 is the flagship model in their range of four metal detectors. When I got the chance to try out, I didn’t think twice - after all, I live quite close to where there are the ruins of an old castle, an ideal hunting ground for buried treasure — or so I thought.

The kit arrived well packed in a cardboard box which was a little smaller than I was expecting but the individual units that make up the detector are neatly packed in a white box so a certain amount of assembly is required.
 
The parcel contained a white box with all the parts inside.

I didn’t mind this and found the assembly and necessary adjustments to make it comfortable in use, quite satisfying.

Assembly

 
The contents of the white box (The screws are not shown here).

At the top left you can see a CD-R containing all the documentation and manual etc. A little surprising in this day and age when most new laptops aren’t equipped with an optical drive and yet most smartphones could easily access the necessary documentation by scanning a QR code or by visiting a URL.  Here is the link to the manual, which is written in English, Dutch, French, Spanish, German, Polish and Portuguese. It shows you how to put the parts together and gives tips on how to use the metal detector out in the field to locate different types of buried artifacts.

 
My first attempt on the left showing the forearm support fitted upside down
and on the right fitted the right way round.
 
At the top of the picture you can see the two parts that fit together to make the main pole of the detector, the search coil is at the bottom left and at the bottom right is the handle and the arm pad which engages under your forearm and helps balance the detector making it comfortable to use even for prolonged periods of detection work. A cable from the search coil is wound around the main pole and plugs into the bottom of the control unit. The arrangement avoids any unnecessary metallic components close to the search coil.


Assembly of the parts is relatively obvious and simple. Unless you have ‘two left hands,’ you won’t even need to reference the manual because you can’t really connect anything the wrong way round (unless you really try). Saying that, it is possible to fit the forearm support the wrong way up. I managed to do this (once again Murphy’s law is proved), but it was immediately obvious what I had done and easy to fix.