The text message from Mequon, Wisconsin, resident Adam Korte, read in part, “Lost my ring in my yard. Looked myself with a cheap metal detector with no luck. Wondering if you would be interested in taking a crack at it?”
Within a few hours I arrived on location and received a first-hand chronology of the events leading up to Adam’s loss. Winterizing his family’s swimming pool Adam flipped the water off his hands in the chill weather. As he did so, he felt his wedding band leave his finger, glancing off his fingernail as it left. Then it just disappeared.
Adam and his 9-year-old son spent the better part of a week searching the area without success. They even tried using a metal detector but the machine set up such a howl it proved frustrating; the ground acted like it was full of metal.
A systematic grid search with my XP Deus metal detector did not reveal the ring’s whereabouts. But there was clearly a large metallic object buried in the frozen ground in the vicinity where the ring disappeared, what we metal-detecting specialists fondly call, “a big and ugly.” It could have been a metal culvert or an old car engine. Whatever it was, my detector coil was picking it up even at waist high. It is situations like this that new metal-detecting technology really shines. I was able to reduce the sensitivity and make adjustments that allowed me to isolate signals in the very narrow range of Adam’s 14K white gold ring. Soon a distinct signal could be heard amidst all the noise. Brushing away the top bits of soil and leaves a razor thin, shiny, circle appeared—it was the ring!
So glad for the opportunity to help recover your wedding band, Adam! Now Santa won’t have to bring a new one for Christmas!
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