Uncategorized Category | Page 446 of 481 | The Ring Finders

I received a call from a young man named Eric on Wednesday. He said he lost his

wedding band the holiday weekend before. He said he was in the water at a lake and throwing a football when he felt his ring come off.

Some of the problems were he was in 5 feet of water and he was in another state 190 miles away. So on this Saturday I made the 3 hour drive with a map showing the general location of his ring.

I searched for around two hours going from the deep water to shallow. I finally got a perfect solid gold hit on the CTX3030, it showed 12-14 at zero inches  in waist deep water.

It was his ring! So glad I could find his ring for this young couple.

Good luck to all of the ring finders out there.

Norm Slaymaker

Lost Diamond Wedding Ring Marble Falls, Texas

Recently traveled 3 1.2 hours up to Marble Falls, Texas  for an underwater recovery job to find my Excalibur was non-operational (busted)

I prepared as always carrying two of everything, batteries, pin pointers, masks, tools, you get the picture. The fact is a lot of work goes into preparing for an underwater recovery, everything I am sure you already understand.

I powered on the Excalibur and immediately noticed something was wrong. I immediately thought, how could the battery be dead, I charged both the primary and secondary battery prior to making the trip to Marble Falls. I thought to myself that’s really weird, and climbed out of the water to retrieve my back-up battery. I mounted the second battery and the presence of silence through the head phones was a shattering disappointment.

I spent a few minutes trying to identify what was wrong when I bumped the battery wire and heard tones through the head phones. A closer examination revealed I was up a creek with no paddle.

I immediately realized that the battery power cable had come loose from its internal coupler and was shorting out. I must admit, I became very upset seeing that the wire was not really held into the coupler with anything more than a mere crimping of the coupler. It seemed improbable that a machine this well
built and designed for underwater operations could have this type of manufacturing design

It’s interesting that all the other cable ends have cable guards/protectors but the most exposed wire on the machine uses a simple crimp to hold it in place?

Excalibur is back at Minelab, while my client is awaiting my return.

Working on a solution, may end up transition the Excalibur to an Anderson Shaft.

If you operate an Excalibur check this cable frequently.

I was searching in a quarry on snorkel as I was not allowed to dive there on scuba.

I found 2 pennies, 2 nails, 2 can pop tops & 1 ring.

An urgent, distressed phone call at work and an early a.m. wake up found me beating the dawn down to the boardwalk beach. A young lady had  lost a very valuable and sentimental necklace there the previous day. She lived 2-1/2 hours away from the beach and had only noticed it missing shortly before arriving back home. Since time is of the essence and meeting at the beach would not be possible I had to go on her description of the possible location over the phone . . never the best option but that’s what I had to work with as the sun rose over the river mouth and boardwalk. The hunt covered 4 hours and approx. 7000 sq. ft. but in the end, no success. The necklace was not in the area described but I decided to contact the owner again to see if there was anything else that may help to determine if another search was warranted or if it was time to call it. As luck would have it the owner remembered a photo that was taken that day and forwarded it to me. Quite by luck, the picture showed landmarks that gave me clear reference points to determine where she had been on the beach. After analyzing the photo I determined that I may have just missed the area by a small margin so I decided to make another sleep challenged assault the following morning. When an owner puts their full trust and hopes in you you want nothing more than to fulfill that. I wanted very badly to reunite this young woman with her treasure and I wasn’t giving up until all options were exhausted. The heirloom was on it’s third generation and I was determined that it would not be the last. Just prior to leaving I made a last second decision to replace the coil on my detector with a smaller one . . a decision that would prove fateful. I was told that the cross pendant had diamonds set in sterling silver, intuition and experience told me that diamonds are usually set in gold or platinum which would give a much smaller, weaker signal which a smaller coil would do better to pick up. Still dark, I determined my spot and began the hunt. An hour in I got a faint, rough, dirty signal on my detector that would almost always prove to be garbage . . all indications were that the detector was « seeing’ a small piece of foil or maybe even a nail, whatever it was it was not very conductive and it sounded small. I hesitated momentarily as this is a very popular beach and trash is all too common but since the stakes were so high I knew I had to check it out. I scraped gently at the sand and suddenly a short length of silver colored chain sat on the surface. I kneeled down, uncovered and gently pulled at the chain when the beautiful diamond encrusted cross popped out and sparkled in the early morning light ! I had ended the previous days hunt about 6-8′ from where it lay. The smaller coil barely registered the object, I’m afraid to think what might’ve happened had I stayed with the larger coil. In the end all that matters is the heirloom cross was going home and, with a little luck would get a chance to meet the 4th generation.

  Hey guys and gals! I got a call last week from a man, in Marblerhead MA, who lost his ring while playing catch with his son.  Loosing something important to you while doing something that is important to you seems very unfair to me, so as soon as I got the call I headed south to Marblehead.

When I got there, Eric told me, « Five adults have been crawling around on their knees for three hours looking for my wedding ring » He showed me the area in his back yard and sure enough there was evidence of many a feet walking around. Actually it looked like the high foot traffic areas at a fair ground.

Eric like many other of my clients had considered renting a metal detector and I’m glad he didn’t, because 10 minutes after arriving I found his ring.  The thing is, I got at least twenty five signals before finding his ring. What most people don’t know and what a rental shop wont tell you is that Platinum rings up like foil or a pull tab on most detectors. Not only did I ignore to low and to high signals, but I also ignored deep signals, something else a newbie wouldn’t take into consideration.  The ring had obviously been stepped on which always gives me a chuckle. I mean the ring was in fine shape it was just that it was pushed down in the ground. How many cool items have I walked on or over in my life and never even knew they were there. Man do I love this hobby. So, primarily we got Eric his ring back and secondly saved him time and money in the process.

Thanks for stopping by!

Guy Fuller

Juan called me around 5pm as I was driving home and asked for help finding his fiancee’s engagement ring. It seems she was talked into going in the surf against her better judgement, and her ring slipped from her finger in thigh deep water. When I arrived, I met the couple and they showed me the approximate search area. At that point the tide had been coming in for about an hour since it’s loss but I figured I’d give it a try anyway. After searching for a couple of hours and high tide approaching, I called it a day but told them I’d be back the next afternoon at low tide. They are to be married soon so failure was not an option. Added to that was the fact that they were leaving town and heading back to Houston in two days! I made it back to the site about an hour before low tide and after contacting Juan, began my grid pattern in the wet sand and out into the shallow surf. I thought I had found it a couple of times but the signals turned out to be other targets mimicing her ring. After about 45 minutes to an hour another strong « gold » sound hit my headphones and sure enough, it was this beautiful ring you see here. Juan got to make the fun phone call to his fiancee and we both enjoyed the moment. Now that we got the ring back, you’re officially engaged again! It was a pleasure to meet you both and thank you for the reward.

Three weeks ago Melissa W. and her husband Dan were visiting her dad in Williamston, MI. His home has a pond on some acreage where the dogs run and play and the family gathers for a warm summer time swim. While swimming in the half acre pond, Melissa was in the deep part of the pond (about 7 to 8 feet deep) when her dog swam by and knocked her rings off her finger. She has swam in Jamaica, in lakes in the Carolina’s and in the river where she lives in Maryland and has never had a problem with her rings coming loose but this was just a freak accident.

Melissa and Dan searched for the rings in the clay bottom pond to no avail. When she went back to Maryland she located the ring finders web page and found my name in the directory. Three weeks have past and Melissa and Dan are about to come back to Michigan from their home in Maryland for the holiday, she gave me a call Thursday Aug 29th and asked for my help. I arranged with my friend who has a Hookah and told her we would be there Saturday morning. There are times when a ring finder needs a little help from his friends and that was now. Chuck R. and Dave B. came to my aid to help dive in the pond. After about an hour of searching the area where Melissa thought it was lost Dave got a hit and found a ring, he knew there were connecting rings so he got another hit about a foot away and recovered the other one. With a raised hand and rings on his pinky finger he walked out of the pond. Melissa put her hands to her mouth in happy amazement and put the rings on her finger. The engagement ring was given to her by her grandmother and the two wedding rings were connected together and interlocked into the engagement ring. So the holiday weekend began with a very happy couple and the family can again go swimming in the pond and the dogs can run on the acreage but this time Melissa’s ring will stay in the house.

It was my pleasure to serve you and thank you for the generous reward. By the way the HOOKAH is an under water breathing apparatus.

Joel H. emailed me Thursday Aug 29 to find out if I could look for a ring that he lost while playing in the water with his 7 year old daughter. Millennium Park is usually off limits for metal detecting so I told him we would have to get permission from the park ranger. Joel made a few calls and Friday morning 8am we were at the park ready to search for his ring. He had pretty much narrowed the search area after loosing his ring he counted the swim buoys and looked back at the beach so he knew where it should be.

I set up some grid markers and began the  search after going from shore to about chest deep a couple of times I got a good signal and took a big scoop of sand and as it was coming to the top I could see a glint of gold as the sand was sifting through my scoop. I picked out the size 13 gold wedding band and asked Joel if that was it. The smile on his face explained it all.

I want to thank Roger and his rangers for allowing us to search the water. As I detect I also pick out any trash from the water and recovered a few pull tabs, bobby pins, a battery and a couple pairs of sunglasses.