Curtis called asking if I could do a recovery in the lagoon behind his house. After going over some details, I told him I would be there soon. He was playing with the dog in the lagoon when his paw accidently broke the chain, and the cross dropped to the bottom before he could grab it. In almost neck deep water I got a faint signal, and sure enough, that was it.
Got a call from Ashley yesterday (Saturday) about her husbands lost ring. She explained how Jeff was throwing a football around the tide line when the ring flew off his hand and dropped into the wet sand. After talking a bit, we decided low tide was so late we would wait till the AM low tide to do the recovery, the surf was fairly calm, so it wouldn’t move to much. Jeff did an outstanding job marking the exact location of the ring, which is paramount when doing recoveries. A few swings later the ring was in the scoop.
I received a text this past Monday 11th from a wife. She said her husband had lost his wedding band in the backyard about a month ago while cleaning out a pool skimmer trap. She was searching the internet and came across www.theringfinders.com where she found my contact information. I made the trip to Calhoun that afternoon and met up with her. She said her husband was still at work, but should be there pretty soon. She said they had actually purchased a metal detector for themselves, but no luck in finding the ring. When Alfred got home he was showing me how he lost his ring cleaning the skimmer with his left hand and throwing the trash over the chain link fence with an underhand motion. He said he felt the ring leave his hand but didn’t see where it went. With that underhand throwing motion I immediately figured the ring had gone over and into the brushy area behind the fence. I eliminated the grass and the plant bed first of course, but no luck. With the chain link fence there I couldn’t get close to it at all without sending my detector into an overload condition. So that part would have to be searched by hand if I didn’t find the ring back in the brush. I started back behind the fence, (poison ivy there too), as well as a snake, but didn’t get a good look at it, it was leaving the area. I started from the right side and went left directly at the back of the fence. The second pass was from the left back to the right, on a steep slope. Of course I was finding bits of metal trash, we all do. On the third pass from right to left I got to right where I figured the ring could have gone with that underhanded throw. The first thing I found there was a rusted bottle cap, then about three feet away I got two signals on my CTX. A strong 12:40 showing four inches, but literally inches away from that signal was another one, a strong 12:28 showing one inch. I hadn’t seen it yet, but that 12:28 at one inch brought a grin to my face. I stooped over and under my coil I saw a faint hint of something shining back at me. I snapped a picture of it before I moved it, and you can barely catch a glimpse of something out of place under the layer of leaves. The 12:40 signal turned out to be a toy car. The search took about 1.5 hours.
I received a call from Mike on Tuesday 28th and he said he had lost his gold signet ring in his backyard several years ago. He said they were moving and the ring was a gift from his wife and he really wanted to find it before they moved. We made arrangements for Wednesday afternoon. Around four years ago he had been clearing brush in the backyard and towards the end of the day he noticed his ring was gone. They had been piling the brush next to the street on the side yard, so that’s where I started my search. I really didn’t think the ring would be there, but I had to eliminate that area of possibility. The huge problem I had to deal with was underground power lines next to the street, (around 14 KV), and it was really messing with my detector. I had to go very slow in that area until I got far enough away that my detector started to settle down a little. After a little over an hour I finally eliminated the side yard. The back of the house had a pretty steep slope that was covered in pine straw mulch. I know from experience that pine straw on a slope can be very slippery. He had mentioned that he had slipped a couple of times on that slope, but didn’t remember exactly where that happened. That’s where I focused my attention next, and after I looked at it more carefully, towards the corner of the house the slope wasn’t quite as steep, so I figured anybody coming through that area would would pick that spot. As I got halfway down the slope I got a consistent 12:20 on my CTX, and it was shallow, (showing one inch). If you’re looking for a gold ring that’s a very good signal. I brushed the straw away and didn’t see anything visible, but my pinpointer said there was something there just under the surface. I brushed the soil a little with my fingers and saw the corner of a gold rim showing through! I called Mike over, as he was just about to go back in the house. His wife came out and she was elated! She said she figured it was gone and never to be found again. I think I was as excited as they were, because that was a tough search having to deal with the underground power lines. Knowing your machine, and asking the right questions makes all the difference. The entire search took around two hours.
I had a call the other day from a young man who lost his grandfather’s ring while throwing a ball about in his garden. It was definitely around as he heard it bounce as it landed. The question was which garden had it landed in? It was either their garden or nextdoor. After a thorough search in their garden including a pile of grass clippings that had unfortunately been contaminated with a few dog “lumps”….(the owner very kindly removed them), I decided to search nextdoor, with the permission of the owner of course. This garden was a complete contrast to the very tidy garden I had just searched. It was very overgrown, there was old furniture, broken jars and pots all over the place, and generally a disaster of a garden. This made it quite difficult to search, even with a 5 inch coil. It was time to use my pinpointer. After about half an hour or so I hit my target, a slightly deformed and worn signet ring. Another great recovery for a family to be reunited with grandfather’s ring.
After a major snow storm in London, a Gold Ring with Diamonds was lost shovelling a driveway. Searching for a Ring Finder, she contacted me immediately. It just made sense that it was in the snowbanks along side the house…in 10 minutes of detecting, a shiny ring was found 2 feet burried in the snow. A very very happy girl!
When I realised the ring I had been wearing non-stop for the last 10 years wasn’t on my finger one morning, I immediately panicked. This ring was a 21st birthday gift from my parents, engraved with my initials on the top and a message from them on the underside, so it was incredibly sentimental to me. I wracked my brains as to where it could be and my heart sunk when I realised there was a chance I could have lost it on a run the day before.
I posted about losing my ring on an online neighbourhood community group which is where someone recommended ringfinders.com, which led me to finding Constantine. 10 days passed between losing my ring and Constantine coming to the rescue. These 10 days were spent tearing my hair out and turning my flat upside down, searching through hoover bags and food waste bins – glamorous!
I had a gut feeling that my ring would most likely be somewhere outside, as I had been cleaning out my guinea pig’s hutch the morning I noticed it missing, and it was a particularly cold morning so my fingers had probably shrunk and were verging on numb so I wouldn’t have felt the ring come off.
Constantine scanned the garden and piles of leaves thoroughly, but no joy. Then we decided to empty the garden waste bin (the contents of which covered the lawn!). I saw Constantine bend down to pick something up, and there it was! He’d found it! I couldn’t believe it.
I received a call looking for someone that could come up and locate a missing ring believed to be in a lake in about 3-4 feet of water. The individual I was talking to was the former Chief of Police of a near by city before moving up to Northern Minnesota. We planned on a time on a Saturday for me to come up and give it a good search.
Upon reaching the beautiful home on Lake Mille Lacs, I was greeted by the homeowner waiting for me out in his driveway. It was a beautiful sunny day with few clouds. I’m guessing it was about 85 degrees, with a slight wind. Another perfect day for ring recovery work. The homeowner Mike had a John Deere Gaiter waiting for me to toss all of my stuff into and took me down to the lake. He explained that he was out moving a couple of bricks around 15’ or so from the end of the dock. Later that evening he and his wife noticed his ring was missing. So putting everything together – figured it was out in the lake where he was working. It had been a couple of days since it was lost and he had some fiberglass stakes marking the lake in the area where he had been.
So I dawned my gear and headed out first doing a Primary Search followed up with a secondary more methodical search. I was finding a bunch of old tops to old beer cans form years gone by. The ones that used the old bottle opener with the pointed end to open the beer cans. The signal that these can tops would make was very similar signal to that of rings. The biggest difference was that they were coming in a little deeper than what I was looking for giving me a little ability to rule out some without digging them. But this is always a little dangerous because you could rule out something that you should not have.
I don’t recall but I remember the sun beating down on the back of my neck and my arm getting a little tire because swinging the metal detector in water takes a little more effort than air swinging. I must have been out looking for 5-6 hours and came up empty at the end of the day.
I decided to head out and come back in the morning and give the yard and other possible locations a search. These locations seemed much less likely from what we were thinking, but because we were unsuccessful in the water, we had to expand the search area. Mike had a well-manicured lawn with a very thick root system. This would make it very hard for a ring to get pushed down very far. My concern was that he had mowed the lawn a coupe of times and if the mower had hit it just right it could have launched it to places unknown. So we were hoping that it was run over by a wheel pushing it down into the lawn. After a search of the yard, shrubs, around the garage, and driveway – Nothing. So it was back to the water again.
By the end of the day we had accumulated a box full of parts to metal beer cans and no ring. It was so frustrating to come up empty for a second day. You could tell that this was also hard on Mike and his wife, they had been married for 40+ years and the ring was with them for all of it. I told them that when they pulled the dock out for winter I would come back up again and give it another search without the dock and boat lift in the way.
So when that time came, I was excited to go back up and give it another try. I had one location that I had a question in the back of my head that I may have had good signal and really wanted to clear one more time. This is wader time with water temperatures running around 50 degrees. The water was glass calm, clear, and down about a foot from the level earlier in the season. I went in and had in my mind clearing that location that I had suspected as being one location I needed to clear. So I went out working the location of the dock working the area slow and methodical. When I made it out towards the location, I was getting close to I got a hit. A little deeper than what I would have liked but a good signal. I dug down and pulled up my scoop and looked inside and there it was another beer can top that I missed on the earlier searches. I kept going and I got another hit in the area that I was looking to clear. It was 3 pieces of metal all right next to one another. 2 were deeper around 4 inches and one was shallower about 2 inches but being masked by the other deeper metal targets. The metal detector was having a hard time picking up the smaller target. Again I scooped it and missing it, but moved it. Rechecked the location and scooped again and had whatever it was. A look inside the scoop and their it was. The ring I had been searching for was in the bottom of my scoop. Mike was at his normal perch overlooking the lake, how do you let him know? I flipped him a thumbs up, but just walked back in to him and showed him the scoop. I had some rocks also in the bottom of the scoop that blocked his view. I shook it a little and he caught a glimpse of it… You found it… My ring.. I can’t believe you found it. It wasn’t long and we were heading back to the house to share the good news. Smiles all around. Pictures, text messages and emails to family members that the ring was recovered. It was great to be a part of the recovery.
Carrie and Sid got a call from Morgan on Labor Day. Her husband of less than one year had lost his wedding band while working in their yard. He had many tasks so the ring could be in any of the four flower beds, garden, yard around the driveway, two potted plants or the trash can where plants and shrimp shells had been tossed. We each headed in different directions and began the search. The metal flower bed borders were the biggest problem. Lots of hunting was by pin pointer. After an hour, Carrie got a good signal on the grass a foot from a flower bed. Found! Needless to say, Morgan was excited and their marriage is now safe.
Thank you for the very generous reward.
Received a call from a young man on the volleyball courts. Everybody was looking, without success, for the ring he had just lost. Luck had it that I was 10 minutes away with all my equipment already inside my vehicle. Outside of the pepper spray incident, we were able to, in a matter of minutes, locate his grandmother’s ring after the clasp of the necklace he hung it on broke. He was overjoyed to have the ring his grandmother gave him before he left for Canada back.