Metal detector rental perth Tag | The Ring Finders

Today as I was getting ready to watch the All Blacks (rugby team) play Australia in a southern hemisphere version of the superbowl, I got a call from Thomas inquiring if I could help find his wifes platinum wedding band which she had lost this morning in the sand at a popular childrens playground in Perths southern suburbs. On the one hand I was thinking, well it’s about time I got an enquiry for what should be a straight forward, easy search (so far this year I have only had one ring search that was not in or underwater, and even that took a monumental effort over 8.5 hrs in a storm!) and on the other that the timing could not be worse with ‘kickoff’ in just an hours time!

I learned that Thomas was a Fly In Fly Out worker who was currently at work in Karratha about 1200 km north of Perth and that his wife had bought a $200 metal detector to search for the ring but had not had any joy.

Luckily (for me and my rugby fetish!) his wife had left the area already so I agreed to meet her at the location at 6.30 pm, which allowed me to get to a pub on the way, watch the All Blacks win the rugby match in the last minute of the game, win a small wager on Beauden Barrett to score a try and skedadle? over to Bibra Lake to meet Thomas’s wife Mandy and his son Julius.

Mandy showed me where she was standing pushing her son in one of the swings and approximately where the ring had shot off her finger into the sand and should still be. I turned on my detector and started to search the sand and almost immediately received a solid signal within the right sort of target i.d range one might expect for a medium weight womens platinum ring.

Alas it was a thick piece of circular wire, damn! I resumed searching and a short while later got another clean signal in the right range. I took a scoop of sand from where I had pinpointed the signal and shaking the sand from the scoop saw that it was indeed a platinum ring, Mandy’s wedding band!

Well as you can see from the photo she was pretty darn happy about it, and just quietly, so was I.

I’d had a pretty good day.. we (New Zealand) had won the rugby against our favourite team to beat, the player I’d picked to score a try.. did, and I’d found a platinum wedding ring in about a minute!

Merry christmas you two… Chow for now!..

 

Hi again! I received an email from Desmond on friday explaining he had lost his ‘Cartier’ gold wedding band somewhere on ‘Sunflowers Farmstay’ in Margret River, about 3 hrs drive south of Perth. Des had been on holiday there with friends and family and would be flying home to Singapore on tuesday evening, so he was obviously distressed that he would now be returning without it.

I asked Des to send me a google earth file showing the areas on the farm where he had been and together we were able to narrow down the time frame and the search area by checking photographs taken on the day that showed the ring both on his finger and not. This still left a lot of ground to cover around the farm buildings (plus the 45 min tractor ride he’d taken across the paddocks!) The farm’s history began in the 1920’s so there was a lot of rubbish metal to deal with. On top of these difficulties there had also been a lot of rain in the area which meant lots of mud! I called the owner of the farm and after explaining the situation, gained permission to search the farm for Des’s ring.

On Monday I set sail with a bit of camping gear (in preperation for a long and difficult search that I knew could take days!) and on arrival I met with Debbie and went over my search plan with her.

As the moon was rising and not knowing how long the weather would hold I decided to start searching as soon as possible. As the ring was a heavier mens gold ring I lowered the sensitivity on my detector to avoid hearing any small or deep signals and ran it on full iron discrimination with appropriate notch discrimination after testing a similar ring and estimating the target i.d range for Des’s Ring.

I detected around the buildings that evening, covering about 650 squares over three hours and after not finding it. determined the next most likely area to search was the barbecue area he’d visited on the 45 min tractor ride around the farm.

Debbie allowed me to camp at the bbq area overnight so I could resume the search at first light.

Unfortunately about 2hrs before sunup a rather nasty storm set in which quickly flooded my camp making for a rather unpleasant start to my day! Unable to detect effectively in the driving rain and concerned about becoming bogged in my ute, I headed back to the farmhouse and rang Des to tell him the bad news regarding the weather and asked a few more questions of him. It was then that I discovered I had missed an area around the farm buildings so between showers I proceeded to search this new area of interest.

Now heres a funny thing… I was nearly finished when two women and their children approached me on their way to feed some kangaroos at the end of the track I was searching when one of the women said “you wont find any gold here”, to which I replied “actually thats exactly what I’m looking for…”  Well bugger me the next thing I found was a gold Singaporean dollar coin! This lifted my spirits a bit and I figured it a good sign that the ring might be nearby. Alas, I completed the search of this area without finding it.

The weather was still coming in waves and I joked with the farm staff that I should put my wetsuit on before searching the paddocks!

Luckily the rain started to ease so I headed back to search the bbq area which also failed to turn up the ring. My worst fears were now a reality knowing it was highly likely the ring was somewhere in the paddocks and that an even bigger storm wasn’t far away! I remember thinking well I’m cold and wet but I’m 3 hrs from home and I really dont want to go home without the ring as well, so I began to search the track leading back to the farmhouses. I sure am glad I started at the right end (the wrong end would have meant another days searching!) as I’d only gone about 40 m when I heard a loud, clear signal and looking down, saw what could only be Des’s ring, glowing brightly amongst the grass. I could hardly believe it for a moment and as there was no one around I did a fair bit of dancing, yelling and screaming. 8.5 hrs mostly in the rain, and finally success, yehaaa!!!!

Hello again! I received a message about a week ago from Lorna to say she had heard I could help people find jewellery lost underwater and could I help her to recover her husbands lost wedding ring. It had slipped from his finger into the sea whilst tying up their boat in one of the many canals in Mandurah. For some reason my phone had not recorded Lorna’s phone number and I had been unable to call her back, until today that is! Whilst checking old messages I noticed a number I had not returned a call to and when I tried the number I recognized Lorna’s voice instantly and felt relieved that I had been able to make contact with her after all.

After a quick chat with Lorna, Dylan ‘the sniffer’ Dog and myself set off on the 1 hr drive down the coast to Mandurah. When I arrived at Lorna’s home she took me to the private jetty in front of the house and showed me where the ring had slipped from Dick’s finger into the sea. I then discovered that the jetty was supported by 25 cm diameter steel poles and as the ring had slipped off very close to one of the poles I was unable to use my metal detector anywhere near it. I decided to use my handheld pin-pointer on low sensitivity to search close to the pole so after getting into my scuba gear I descended near the pole only to find I would also be working with about one foot of visibility as the mud bottom was impossible not to disturb and there was virtually no current at the location to clear the billowing blackness away. Unable to detect anything near the pole (except the pole!) but knowing the ring must be nearby I began to use the pin-pointer as you would a normal detector, sweeping it in an overlapping, methodical manner covering just 4″ or so at a time. Luckily there was not much metal rubbish here and at about 1 meter from the pole I felt the pin-pointer start to vibrate again in my hand indicating another metal item in the mud. Feeling around for solids I brought back a shell the first time and then as my hand became visible through the cloud of mud (I could not see past my elbow in front of me) on the second attempt, out of the gloom appeared the unmistakable glow of what could only be Dicks gold wedding ring! I surfaced triumphantly and held the ring up for Lorna to see and the smile that spread across her face made me feel so warm I said “I wish I could pay my bills with that smile, as I’d have none left!”

After getting out of the water I found my scoop missing from the back of the boat and realized I must have knocked it into the drink as I was getting out and had to don my wet gear again and a few minutes later after feeling around in the dark found it and returned to the surface.

By this time Lorna’s husband had returned and over a cup of tea I learnt the story behind the ring. Lorna had it made 34 years ago with Dicks family shield forming the top of the ring. 34 years! Well that explained the ear to ear smile I’d received shortly after popping up! Thanks Lorna and Dick for making my day too!

Thank you good Samaritan! On Good Friday I received an email from Amber telling me she had lost her engagement ring in the drink at South Beach, Fremantle about 11 am. She had searched for the ring for about half an hour before giving up due to the churning sand filled water making it nearly impossible to see the sea floor. Amber’s first bit of luck (and mine) came when one of several good Samaritans who were helping her to look for the ring was able to tell her to google the RingFinders.com and find the guy (me) who he had heard being interviewed on ABC Perth Radio talk back about the recovery of Jacqui’s ring from the waters of Rottnest Island (see my previous posts for more..) the day before. Luckily for her I had not gone to my metal detecting clubs annual ‘gold camp’ in the Western Australian outback for the Easter break. I learnt that she had lost it pretty close to high tide in thigh deep water just behind the breakers and that the tide would be getting lower throughout the afternoon making it both harder to find but easier to recover at the same time!

I met Amber and her 3 year old daughter ‘Willow” at the cafe at South Beach a few hours later and she was able to take me to the waters edge where she had lost it. I asked her to place a traffic cone on the beach closest to where she could remember having lost the ring when she had decided to take it off one off the fingers on her right hand and return it to her ring finger on her left hand.

I then set two other cones about 5 meters either side of Ambers as a visual reference and began to search in and out of the tide to thoroughly

cover the area of loss. After wasting 5 mins or so on the first ‘stay-tab’ (aluminium can pull tab called that because its supposed to stay on the can and the bain of all metal detectorists!) I settled in for the long haul and went about my work thinking it could take a while to find this ring as it was likely right where the small waves were now breaking on the beach which would have been knee to thigh deep at the time of loss (a bit easier to find but harder to recover).

Hopeful as always of a quick recovery I had entered the water in bare feet and was beginning to get a sore foot from my sand scoop so I called up the beach for my dive booties just as I got a nice loud signal from my detector. Shaking the sand and shells out of my scoop I looked down to see a gorgeous diamond encrusted heavy white gold engagement ring! (Amber had sent a picture of the location and the ring to my phone but I had not yet seen them and hadn’t even asked Amber for a description of it at that stage). Suppressing my excitement and putting on my best poker face I headed up the beach leaving the ring in the scoop which I placed just behind her as I reached for my dive booties and made out that I was about to put them on.

At this point I looked up at Amber and asked her what the ring looked like. she replied “didn’t you get the photos I sent” and as she showed me the picture of the ring on her phone I removed the ring from the scoop and standing as I presented it to her said “looks a bit like this one don’t you think?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click the link below to the ‘ABC Perth Radio Recording’, simply press the play button once there. The interview is just after the news and traffic report.

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/perth/programs/drive/drive/8423892

N.b – More info on this search can be found in two of my my previous blogs (my story and the W.A Today news report) for anyone who is interested.

Giday! Unbeknownst to me one of my recent ‘Ring Receivers’, Jacqui, shared a post she had put up on her Facebook page after I had reunited her with her very precious eternal ring. The Rottnest Island Facebook Page she shared it with happens to be followed by 185,000 people. Top work Jacqui! The post created quite some interest with many comments and some potential ring rescues as a result.

Later the next day I got a call from Hannah a reporter for ‘W.A. Today’, a large readership, online newspaper in Western Australia who had seen the post and was interested to know more about the find.

She asked various questions of me which led to the following news article.. enjoy!

 

Recently a fellow metal detectorist and friend Luke, who knew that I do diving recoveries of rings contacted me to inquire if I could help his landlord find and retrieve an expensive anchor from a reef in 10.5 meters of water, somewhere between Garden and Carnac Islands off the W.A coast, where he and his mate ‘Harvey’ had snapped their anchor line when it became jammed in a reef.

“Nothing like looking for a needle in a haystack” I said and after gaining Steve’s number I called him to get a few more
details and organize when we could attempt to find it.

A few days later I met them at my friends house where Steve and Harvey keep their boat and after loading my ‘lucky anchor’ (more about that in due course), dive gear and ourselves left on the 45 min trip to the Woodmans Point boat ramp to put the boat in the water.

Luckily Steve had marked the approximate location of the anchor on his sounder but when we arrived at the location and zoomed the sounder as far as possible it showed track lines all over the area as they had tried to free the anchor from
multiple angles before the anchor line was cut by the reef which made it difficult to ascertain the actual possible location of the anchor. After a bit of thinking we agreed a particular area of the criss-crossed lines was the most likely so I asked Steve to approach the area from down current and wind at dead slow speed and to cut the engines just before we were on top of the area we had selected. I dropped my ‘lucky anchor’ when he said we were right on it, called for him to give the boats engines a couple of ‘squirts” in reverse to help me ensure my anchor was set.

Now here is the thing about this ‘lucky anchor”. In a previous post regarding a ring I recovered in less than 10 mins in the middle of the Dawesville Cut I thought I had done an amazing job to drop my anchor about 4 meters from Roberts Gold
Ring. Well after suiting up I dived down my anchor line and as I approached my anchor’s chain I realized why they had lost theirs.. It was like the Himalayas down there with 4-5 m deep, 1 m wide ravines, huge 4-6 m high bombies (large/tall rocks) and seaweed all  over it. Looked like a great fishing spot too just quietly. I realized I would first need to re position my anchor or it would be the next one I had to dive for. As I turned to my right to look back up my anchor line in order to shift it (with a 28 foot floating fish on the end of my line in one hand and my feet in flippers straining against the reef!) I’d got through about 120 degrees when I saw Steve’s anchor wedged under the overhang on the same bit of reef not two meters away. It could only be seen from this angle and I could not believe my luck as I had had a bit of a sinking feeling when I had seen the bottom structure etc figuring this really would be a mission to find!

I tied a cray pot line to their anchor and slowly made my way up to the boat, where I passed the line to Steve to haul the anchor up.

Having only been in the water 5 mins or so I had a lot of air left in my tank and suggested I try and find a couple of crayfish to celebrate but as the current was fairly strong and it looked like somewhere I would hang out in if I was a big shark I suggested we try another location, its the only decision I now regret from that day as I failed to find any crays at the next location returning with my catch bag full of beer bottles and someones hoodie from the seafloor.

Anyway we all had a great day and Steve sure looked happy to have his anchor back. All in a days work eh, love my job!

 

Giday, Giday. Got a message from my facebook ‘spy’ about 6.30 pm to say a lady had lost a very sentimental ring in the ocean, at Parker Point on Rottnest Island and was seeking someone who could try and recover it for her. (Thanks buddy).

I did a little ‘facebook spying’ myself and luckily her maiden name was not a common one, as her married name was! I tried a white pages search and got lucky as there were only two results for that surname in all of Australia, and both were in Perth! I tried the numbers and left a message with both explaining who I was and that I was trying to contact a Jacqui with the same surname and wondered if she was a family member. Within 30 mins both responded as one was her father and the other her sister, so after speaking to both, they tracked her down for me and Jacqui called me a little while later.

After gaining the full story from her, I did the appropriate research on the location and the weather and decided I needed to get out to the Island the next morning at ‘sparrows fart’, as the weather would be deteriorating throughout the day and only two days before I had had to abandon a diving search due to poor weather conditions making the boat I was diving from drag its anchor! With these recoveries ‘time is of the essence’ and they should be attempted ASAP if the weather allows. Jacqui had lost her ‘precious’ about 3 pm on Sunday and it was now Thursday so the clock was ticking!

I took the first ferry to the Island the next day, caught a bus out to Parker Point and went straight to the ‘loss location’ from there.

Arriving at the search area I found that the beach had been fairly well stripped of sand (google earth showed the beach having about 25-30 m of white sand from the base of the cliff to the waters edge) and began to realize that this search may not be so easy as when a foot or two of sand has been removed at the base of the access stairs to a popular tourist spot, that most of the rubbish items on the beach over the years would now be concentrated in, on and under the limestone reef the sand would normally cover. I thought I might have a long day ahead ferreting out the various rubbish items from the cracks and this is how it started to look as the first recovered signal was a $2 coin with a heavy ‘green verdigris’ (green corrosion) which indicated it had been lost here a very long time ago.

I had dive booties on as the limestone reef was incredibly sharp and jagged underfoot (it had cut Jacqui’s feet and she had warned me! Thanks Jacqui). When I removed the coin from the water I noticed a sharp piece of coral was sticking out of one of my fingers and upon removal of it, as you do, it bled like billy-oh of course! The next item I found was a ‘beaver tail’ (ring pull tab), then a broken zipper, and then another beaver tail!

About this time a chap and his three children on the access stairs above me stopped and asked what I was doing which I explained and then resumed searching whilst he and his kids looked on. At the time I had heard another good signal coming from a crack in the reef and after half a dozen scoops of sand and shells, came up with Jaquis ring appearing in my hand as the sand washed away from it just below the surface. Overjoyed I looked up to see the chap on the stairs still watching and I said “you are a ‘lucky charm’ buddy”, and raising the ring in my hand, said “look what I just found!”

When I got back to some phone reception, I rang Jacqui and said “so do you want the good news or the bad news first?”, she replied “whats the good?”, I said “I’ve found it” and she said “you’re not serious are you” as I hadn’t been there more than half an hour and I spent at least ten mins of that having a bit of breakfast on the beach! After collecting herself she asked so whats the bad news and I replied “Oh the bad news..” she said “you haven’t lost it again have you” and I replied “No… the good is I found it, the bad news is its not yet mid day and I cant get a ferry back to Fremantle until 3 pm to reunite you with it!”

It really was so rewarding to reunite Jacqui with her ‘precious’! I just wish more people knew about TheRingFinders service and that I could do this for someone every day! Love my job so much!!

Hi again! About 1 pm on Wednesday the 1st of March, I received a message from Nadia to say her father had dropped her late grandfathers wedding ring in the middle of the ‘Dawesville Cut’ the prior evening. A diver was currently in the ocean searching for it, but if he was unsuccessful could I please come and search for it with my metal detector?

After researching what the tide and wind were doing at the time, and bearing in mind the very strong currents which run through ‘The Cut’, (not to mention a fair amount of boat traffic), I determined that 2 pm the following day might be the best time to attempt to recover the ring.

After arriving at the marina the following afternoon I loaded my equipment onto the boat and we left the marina to find the GPS location marked at the time the ring had been lost.

I dropped the anchor a little bit up the current from the mark on the sounder, waited for the ‘pick’ to grab and let out more and more anchor line until the GPS showed we were nearly on the spot and facing roughly the same way the boat was on the previous night. By rights this meant the ring should now be somewhere behind the boat.

Not knowing what to do at the time, Robert had stayed ‘on the anchor’ overnight. In the morning Nadia had called and suggested he ‘lose’ something else overboard that would be easy to find by a diver and would mark the general location to search for said ring.

I dived down in 3.5 m of water for a quick recon of the sand and weed bottom trying to sight some yellow handled pliers and a hammer which would indicate the approximate location where the ring must be. Despite the great visibility I could not find them so after about 5 mins in the water I decided to surface and re-position the boat.

At this point I swam another anchor (temporarily tied to a fender float) out on an angle from the starboard stern of the boat. I suspected the boat had been laying with the stern to the ENE at the time of loss due to a SW breeze over a decreasing NW incoming current through ‘The Cut’. Once I had tightened the second anchor line Robert agreed that the boat was now laying pretty much as it had been the previous night.

After ‘suiting up’ I dived down along the anchor rope to again search for the tools and found them literally 2 meters back from the anchor chain and about a meter to my right! Seriously, I very nearly dropped that anchor right on top of them! I placed my own marker on the sea floor, retrieved the tools and returned to the boat with them. I really wish I had been using my go pro camera as Roberts face was a real picture as I handed him the tools no more than two minutes after re-entering the water! He just could not believe (and nor could I) how easy this part of the search had been.

I dived again, this time with my metal detector and started an imaginary ‘jackstay’ style search back and forth to the right of the anchor line in order to search the area in which I had found the tools.

I started my search about half way along the rope, turned at the anchor chain, and as I passed over where the tools had been (Thank you Nadia!) and just BEFORE I swept my detectors coil over it, there in the white sand was the unmistakable glowing golden rim of what could only be a gold ring!

Elated I returned to the surface where Robert was simply astonished that after having a dive master from a local dive store search for the tools for over an hour without success, I’d returned in just a few minutes with what he truly

believed he’d lost forever, his late father in-laws wedding ring.

Earlier when I was ‘suiting up’, Robert had mentioned that if I could find the ring he would gladly call the local press which he now did to tell them the wonderful story. (The reporter made it an exclusive story in the next issue of the ‘Mandurah Coastal Times’)

As we’d not long left the marina and I still had a full tank of air, Robert suggested that to celebrate, a couple of fresh crayfish for dinner might now be in order!! I agreed of course so we weighed anchor and headed out to a reef on the ocean side of ‘The Cut’ where I did indeed find a couple of fine crayfish. Yum, yum and a bottle of rum!… what a way to end an awesome day for us all!!