kerikeri metal detector Tag | The Ring Finders

Silver Ring lost in Kerikeri Garden While Throwing Dog Toy

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Giorgia was visiting family in Kerikeri over the summer break, having come up from Wellington.
While out in the garden, she was throwing toys for the dog when she suddenly thought she saw her silver ring flying through the air.
A quick check of her hand confirmed it—she had lost her ring.
The family quickly sprang into action, searching the lawn, but to no avail.

She contacted me a couple of days later, and before long, I was standing in their garden, recreating the sequence of events with her over the phone.

By this point, Giorgia had returned to Wellington, but talking to her on the phone, she thought the ring might be in the shrubbery to the right of where she had been standing, or possibly as far as 20 meters away in some bushes near the garage.

The dog had only been trained to retrieve toys, not rings…

I covered the likely areas, and because she mentioned seeing the ring airborne, I was able to focus on a fairly tight search quadrant.
As often happens, though, it wasn’t where she thought it would be.

This is when I switched to my ‘unknown location’ search pattern, and sure enough, twenty minutes later, I found the ring tucked into the thatch of the manicured lawn—nearly 90° from the initially indicated direction of travel, and behind a large tree, 15 meters from where she had been standing. It was a spot the family had already searched.

The ring must have bounced off the branches, which deflected it down and behind the tree.
Every search has its unique twists and turns.

 

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Two Gold Rings Lost Gardening – Found in Long Grass

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Eleanor was weeding around their bach at Tokerau Beach in Doubtless Bay, just some light stuff to tidy up.

Later that day, she noticed her treasured gold and diamond engagement ring and her eternity ring were missing.

Searches of the weeded area and the lawn revealed nothing, so her daughter gave me a call.

Thirty seven years experience in recoveries, and state of the art equipment meant the two rings were swiftly located in long grass surrounding a clump of flax.

A cheaper detector, or novice user would have been unlikely to locate these lost rings as they were very fine, and tucked down deep in the dense foot-high grass of similar colouration.

Just over thirty minutes after arriving, hugs and handshakes were being exchanged now the lost rings had been found and were back in their proper place.

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Important Key Lost in House – Found by Intensive Search

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Kim phoned me on behalf of a friend asking if I was able to do a house search for an important key.
I generally don’t do domestic searches for lost items purely because they can be. by necessity, very intrusive into peoples ‘space’.

Whilst conventional metal detectors are ineffective inside houses, I have a range of small coils, pinpointers and remote cameras to aid a physical search.

Kim explained the circumstances: Her elderly friend had lent their car to another elderly friend – who had misplaced the key.
It could have been anywhere from the car to inside the house, maybe in a wood shed…or, who knows?

Knowing the significant expense and hassle involved in an insurance claim, especially for an 80-something year old, I agreed.
Though it was over 100km away, the travel would largely be covered by a Pay-It-Forward recovery I had done recently.

I arrived the following morning and met with Jan, she was most apologetic as we went through retracing her steps as best we could, and I explained how I would be conducting the search.
Starting with the car, the last known point where she would have had the key, I began the systematic and meticulous elimination of areas.
With the car and driveway cleared, the search progressed up onto the deck and then into the house.

From here it was a matter of examining everything Jan had, or had potentially interacted with the previous day. On, in, under, beside, behind…

An hour later, in the bottom of a box of assorted dog leashes, treats and toys etc. a shape caught my eye.

I held up a key,  » This it? »

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Tiny Diamond Ear Stud found in Kerikeri Lawn

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Adrienne had been working in her Kerikeri garden a few days ago, when she felt her diamond ear stud flick off her ear – and disappear into the kikuyu lawn.
After searching for some time on hands and knees, they gave me a call in the hope I would be able to locate the lost ear stud.
I turned up today to find they had already marked out primary and secondary areas with spray paint, along with a generous safety margin of unmown grass. Textbook stuff.
Whilst they had been able to isolate most of the adjacent electric fences, there was one which they couldn’t trace – that and a buried powerline running right through the search area weren’t going to make life easier when listening for a whisper of platinum though.
I got started with a very tight search pattern and the machine running as sensitive as I could stand, the phones twitching and chattering incessantly from the electrical interference.
After clearing a few false hits, I was pulling at the kikuyu down to the moist soil underneath, where a tiny ear stud was making itself very comfortable.
It’s always warm fuzzies when I’m able to return something so precious.
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Keys Lost in Kerikeri Paddock – Found

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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My current run of enquiries to find lost keys continues…

Nadège contacted me through the local Paihia Facebook group – a visitor of hers had lost keys in a paddock while working the previous day.

These lost keys were critical as they held, amongst others, the keys to his van and lockup.

On arrival, the « Long Grass » turned out to be rank overgrown pasture, and the search area covered an hours-worth of meandering track around the paddock and through two swampy streams.

I prepared myself for a prolonged mentally and physically difficult session.

Bob took me around and showed me where he had walked including where he had deviated to fix various things or pull out weeds. Identifying his original route was very difficult due to his previous attempts to retrace his steps looking for them at the time which gave me several tracks all the same age – and the cows that were also wandering around had added their own tracks, although they were mostly readily identified as such.  I did a cursory scan as we walked, finding several piles of old metal stakes, wire, poles and pipes buried in the grass. Farms are almost as bad as suburbia for background noise.

We completed the circuit, and Bob left me to it. As the coil would be 1-2ft above the ground due to the rank growth, I wound the settings right up to maximise the chances of picking up the keys. Whilst this would ensure a strong signal (as long as the coil went over them), it meant the phones were chattering constantly with other background noise from the neighbors electric fences, long lost buried tools, wire, fence staples and so on. Each strong signal had to be checked through the grass, before moving on. Whilst this was quick, it was a very frequent occurrence, however if it wasn’t the intended target, it could stay there, whatever it was.   I was on a mission.

Nearly three hours later, with the highest probability areas now cleared to a 90%+ detection rate, I was struggling to work out where they could be – Were they even in the paddock? Could Bob have left them somewhere back at the house?

Bob had walked along the short grass of the mown track each time he’d done the circuit looking for them, and indeed, I had walked it with him today- but a bunch of keys with a red tag would have been easily visible here.

I started back up the hill to focus on a few spots which had a lot of metal rubbish, absent-mindedly swinging the coil over the mown track as I went, when the headphones screamed!

In the middle of the track, was a cow pat with a solid signal!  On closer inspection, I could see the blade of a key and the edge of a red plastic tag emerging from underneath.  The cow must have dropped the pat on the dropped keys, between Bob losing them, and his coming back this way to look for them!

Hidden, in plain sight.

I dug them out, gave them a quick rinse in a nearby trough and headed back up the hill. Relieved that this search, one of the most difficult in a while, was now over.

Assume Nothing, Check Everything…

 

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