Cincinnati, Ohio - Lost CASE knife, family heirloom of sentimental value - recovered!

I was contacted by a friend who knew I did some metal detecting and ring recoveries and he asked if I would search for a special knife he lost while baling hay. My friend had been working with a knife his Grandfather had given him and he had searched the hay field for several days trying to locate it himself when we connected by telephone and I promised to start searching that evening as darkness would not pose a problem. However, my understanding of the baler’s operation and of the search areas was not quite correct and so as I searched in the dark I was finding old farm vehicle parts and aluminum as I should have, but no knife. Giving up when my flashlight batteries all died, I returned the next morning and searched again in daylight but I still had no luck.

Frustrated, I met my friend at his barn on my way out for lunch and he demonstrated how the baler operated and we both noted my search areas had been off by at least 10 to 15 foot at each site and so I promised to try again that afternoon.

There were 22 bale spots I needed to search and my friend took the time to mark each of the spots for me with sticks and wooden blocks to help define the search areas for me. After meeting and reviewing the search areas with him again and getting a better description of the knife, I headed to the field to start my third search in a cool and drizzling rain.

As I approached the filed this third time I had mounted the large 17″ coil on my CTX 3030 and I was searching using a wide open pattern with no discrimination and so I was confident. The first thing I saw was that my friend had done a thorough job of marking each of the 22 spots I needed to search and I remembered he had said he felt the knife was in the western side of the field and so I began my search within the north western most bale location he had marked. After turning on the CTX 3030 and tuning it, I circled the site twice and within two minutes I received the signal I was hoping for! The knife had been lost at very the last bale’s location.

Returning to the barn within twenty minutes my friend asked me what I had found as I had already turned up some interesting rusted pieces of farm equipment during my searches but I think he was hesitant to believe I might have found his knife.

He was surprised and happy to have his grandfather’s knife back in hand and I was happy to have helped.

His smile says it all!