On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 07:08:26 +0100, newshound
wrote:

snip

Have a look at the Zircon ones, they usually work well. Having said that
a strong magnet salvaged from an old hard drive will usually find the
nails fixing the board to the stud quite well.


+1 for magnets. Cheap enough on eBay if you don't have a hard drive to hand.

I took my strong magnet and picked up a cheap finder from Wickes on
the way, along with some Fisher bolts and some small angle brackets
(with slots on one side to allow vertical movement of the floor
standing shelves as they get loaded up).

As it turns out, the she wanted this shelving against was an external
wall and whilst the magnet did pick up *some* ferrous stuff (points),
I couldn't find anything stud-like so assume the plasterboard was held
on with dot-n-dab?

There was one very strong continious vertical ferrous indicator but
only one and not near anything obvious (pipes / wires etc).

So we just drilled straight though the plasterboard and into the
blockwork in 4 places and all 4 nipped up pretty well. ;-)

I tried the magnet and stud-finder on one internal wall and did find
more sign of fasteners in vertical lines with the magnet and the
wooden studs with the finder.

Also found a stud with the finder in the bathroom (for a picture).

The finder seems to work like mine where if you find a stud with a
very broad indication, if you release and re-press the button at the
edge of the initial indication, it then offers a finer one (maybe as
narrow as 10mm).

Cheers, T i m