Lost Ring while throwing ball, Sanford, Florida....Found!

New Years Eve I received a call from Milton’s father, Mr. Mark, asking if he could borrow my metal detector to find his son’s lost ring?!!  I explained that I normally do not loan out my detector but I would be more than willing to come over and look for his son’s ring.  It took just a few minutes to walk over to Mr. Mark’s apartment and their I met Milton and his little family and listened to his story.

Milton said his ring was sort of loose to start with and he normally does not wear it, but since they were on vacation he decided to leave it on.  It was a beautiful warm day (compared to the rest of the country!) and Milton was on the driveway playing ball with his two kids.  At one point he began throwing the ball straight up, with two hands, and on his final and hardest throw he felt his ring go flying just as he released the ball.  He did not hear it hit the concrete so figured it must have landed somewhere in the grass.  So they began to search all the grass along the driveway and even used a rake hoping to expose the ring.

As I listened to Milton explain the details I felt very confident that we could find his ring somewhere in the grass.  So I began grid searching.

After an hour or so and no ring I began to think maybe the ring landed on the roof and rolled off in another area.  Still no luck.  It was getting dark so I assured them that I would be back the next day.

Later that evening I remembered what Chris Turner said about using a test ring to narrow down the search area.  So in my collection of old rings I have an assortment of copper rings used for plumbing that work great for test throws.  Very similar to rings in size and weight.

So, New Years Day I met Milton and we did a few test throws.  Sure enough the first throw landed in the grass and then the 2nd throw landed further and closer to the building.   There were 3 foot high bushes along the front so I did a very thorough search of each bush and sure enough, there hiding at the base of one of the bushes was Milton’s ring!

Have something hiding that you just cannot find?   Maybe I can help!

Mike McInroe