This time of year I am very busy at the beaches looking for lost items for clients. But I recently received an email from Brandon stating his wife lost a ring in their back yard. He was local so it wouldn’t be the normal hour plus ride to the shore.
I started asking the normal questions: What is the ring made of? Is there metal objects in the yard? How did it happen? And so on. I got answers to all of the questions except how did it happen. So I asked again. He said I’ll tell you the real story, not the one we are telling family and friends. I said stop, let me guess, there was an argument and the ring was tossed.
There was a pause, and he said how did you know? I said that it happens a lot more than you think. We made arrangements for me to come out on the weekend. He emailed me throughout the week asking how confidant I was that I could find it. I kept reassuring him that the odds were really good.
We met on a Saturday morning. He showed me the area that he thought that the ring was in. Boy the yard was big. I had him recreate the incident. He stated that the ring wasn’t here, he had bought a $50 metal detector and all it did was beep constantly. He took it back and bought a $150 metal detector. It did the same thing. He then spent several hours of everyday for a week on his hands and knees looking through the grass.
I went to my truck to get my gear ready for the search. Good thing I bring more than 1 detector with me. My CTX3030 with a 10 inch coil was my choice to start. Well I left the battery at home in the charger. OK a quick call to my wife to see if she could bring the battery out. She couldn’t for about 30-60 minutes. OK I guess I will be using my Minelab Explorer with a 3 inch coil. Wow this will make it much more difficult with the size of the area that will need to be covered.
I started the search. I now see why both of the detectors that Brandon bought were constantly beeping, a lot of buried iron. He let me scan over the wedding band made of the same material. I now had the correct tone & number id’s to help weed through all of the iron. I worked a grid pattern.
As I worked the grid pattern I came to an area that he was pulling grass and weeds. He placed them into a large plastic bag. I moved the bag and got the tone I was listening for. I looked under the grass and there was the missing ring, partially submerged into the dirt. It looks like it might have been stepped on to push it into the ground like that. It took less than 30 minutes to make the find.
I was amazed that I found it with my baby coil in such a large area. I quickly called my wife to tell her that I didn’t need the battery. She hadn’t left yet.
Brandon was totally amazed that I found it. He said that he concentrated his search in that area and missed it multiple times. The look on his face was priceless. He is totally out of the dog house now.
I can’t stress it enough. If you lose something don’t waste your time and money buying or renting a metal detector. It takes years to learn how to properly use them. Call a professional.
