Northland Jewellery Recoveries Tag | Page 3 of 8 | The Ring Finders

Lost Ring at Tokerau, Found in the sea

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Back up to Tokerau Beach, NZ, for a wedding ring in the tide this time.
Nathan was playing with his daughter in waist deep water, throwing her up and catching her.
As he released her, he saw his wedding ring come off and drop into the water. They searched for some time before accepting the ring was lost.
Back on shore, Nathan took a bearing and paced out an approximate distance to where he thought it was- then gave me a call.
I arrived for the evening low tide, waded out and got to work to find his lost wedding ring.
The sand leveled out below low tide mark, so « waist deep » went out about 50m or so – A huge potential area.
I had searched the indicated area by the time failing light and tide forced me out. Regrettably I advised Nathan that I had been unsuccessful, with nothing more than a handful of lead sinkers and rusty hooks in the pouch.
But I don’t walk away easily…
Up at 4am, I was back in the tide just after 5 – sharing the shallows with the dorsal fins of a dozen Rig sharks, focused on their own search for crabs as the night gave way to dawn.
I reviewed the search area of the previous day and decided that I was generally happy that had the ring been there, I would have likely found it.
I decided to extend the search area.
After about 2Hrs using various search patterns, I got a distinct ‘double thump’ of a shallow target, some 20m from the original area.
I lifted the scoop, sifted the sand out in the water and heard that ‘jangle’ that tells me – Job Done.
I think I woke Nathan up when I phoned him, « I’ve got something of yours here… »
It didn’t take him long to get down to the beach!
If you lose an item at the beach, make a note of where you are. Line up two landmarks, even better, line up another two at right angles to the first. Then give me a call, and I’ll do my utmost to get it back to you.
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Lost Gold Bangle at Tokerau, Found with Metal Detector

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Cayla was enjoying the summer playing with her young daughter in the shallows at Tokerau Beach,  soon realising that the special gold bangle had slipped off her toddlers wrist.

Her partner did all the right things by marking above the high tide mark where they were on the beach and called me straight away, time is always against us with ocean recoveries…

As soon as I got his message I gave my apologies to family, loaded the kit in the car and headed off on the 90km drive to Doubtless Bay.

We arrived at the beach only to find that out of the available 13km of beach, a family had parked a half dozen utes right on top of ground zero. Cayla persuaded them to relocate one of them in a prime area so I could search.

A few false starts with beer can pull tabs and a couple of longline fishing traces (removing several hooks out of the sand in the process) and I had reached the utes.

I changed the direction of the grid to start working parallel to the vehicles to maximise coverage before we needed to ask a little firmer if they wouldn’t mind shuffling along a bit.  On the first run at the outer line of the first pattern, I got a clear and shallow signal.

My fingers dipped into the wet sand and lifted the tiniest most delicate gold bracelet.

I turned and held it up to Cayla and Scott who were a few metres away, smiles all round.

 

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How to find a Manhole Cover – Russell, Bay of Islands.

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Had a call from Gary – He’d lost a manhole cover!
A big, heavy, cast iron manhole cover… put down over a water bore in the early 1990’s.

Now normally a manhole is an easy target, except this one wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
Going off the 30 year old recollections of the previous caretaker who was present at the installation showed that memory can be a fickle thing especially with the passage of time.

As more memories came in, the story about the location became confused and strewn with ‘red herrings’. Was the manhole even still there, or had it been replaced with wood, or had the plastic bore casing and alkathene been sealed and backfilled with no metallic targets to find?
Consulting old aerial photos online , and even the Regional Council borehole database didn’t help improve the odds of refining the actual, or even general location given the database showed it was out in the adjacent estuary.

With the bore stated as being « 60cm below surface », the orchard started to show the effect of false, but promising targets.

An old fencing stake buried vertically below the surface was chased downwards in the hope it was marking the bore (that was a big hole!), and even a spoon made an appearance in another hole as I hunted for a potential deep brass, copper or galvanised fitting.

As the final remaining pockets of grass among the trees were cleared, the detector – set for maximum sensitivity for a deep target, suddenly overloaded the headphones – and there, just under the grass was the edge of a manhole cover.

Fortunately only 6cm down, and not 60…

A significant expense to drill a new bore had been avoided.

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Kaikohe Wedding Ring Lost Over Edge. Found!

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Yesterday, Moana was tidying up her vege planter and throwing the weeds over the edge of the bank in Kaikohe, when she heard and felt a clash of rings on her throwing hand.
Checking, she realised that she had just lost her mums precious gold wedding ring over the steep bank and into the Kikuyu.
Someone loaned her a cheap detector, however without decent equipment and experience in recoveries the odds were stacked against her.

She didn’t locate it.

I got a call last night asking if I was able to help, and this afternoon I was shown the scene, not the toughest job I’ve had, but would have been in the top 10 – I certainly had my work cut out on this one.
Looking for a tiny ring in knee-deep Kikuyu on a slope that ranged from steep, to having to hang onto handfuls of grass to stop sliding away had potential to be a long hard battle.
90 minutes later though, I was knocking on the door with the gold ring in my hand.
The reactions I get are always worth far more to me than gold.

If you’ve lost a ring in the garden or even a paddock, maybe you’ve hired a metal detector or a friend has had a go without luck and you’ve given it up as lost – give me a call !
I’ll do my best to put that ring back on your finger and a smile back on your face!

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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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Phone Lost in Russell, Found in Dense Scrub

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Jimmy contacted me as his houseguest had lost his phone in some scrub near Russell.

He had been helping him clear invasive trees from a steep and very overgrown hillside, with his phone ‘safe’ in a leg pocket, secured by a hefty press-stud.

At some stage in his wanderings and stumblings through the dense undergrowth, the press stud on the pocket had been caught and come undone – The phone likely found its way out shortly after. « Murphys Law » came into play with zero reception, so his attempts to ring or otherwise locate the phone were futile.

The going was very tough with a large coil, negotiating the many trees lying where they had fallen, in places the branches meant I couldn’t get closer than a metre or more to the ground surface so I focussed on clearing the more accessible areas with the big coil and the machine running in full sensitivity for the merest whisps of a signal. Constant impacts from branches and vegetation, coupled with the mineralisation of the ground made the machine extremely « chatty ».  It took all my focus to decipher the barrage of sounds, whilst trying to stay upright negotiating the steep slippery ground, fallen branches and trunks.

I was already planning on how I would go about searching the area with the small 6″ coil on a special wireless rig I custom made for such scenarios, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t looking forward to the many potential hours this recovery might take. However it was a tightly defined – albeit extremely difficult,and relatively large – area, so I knew it was just a matter of getting a coil close enough to pick up the missing phone.

I worked my way through the gorse and scrub, and in one area where several trees had been felled, I got a faint, but repetitive signal coming from under a trunk.

Placing the machine down, I slipped my arm in through the tangle of branches and stretched my fingers out under the fallen trunk.

It was with great satisfaction that I felt my hand close around a shape and glassy texture definitely not encountered in nature.  After facing a potentially very slow and intricate search across the hillside, I was possibly more relieved than the owner!

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Lost Wedding Ring at Te Ngaere – Found.

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Jojje posted a message to Facebook stating he had lost his silver wedding ring at Te Ngaere beach near Whangaroa.  He had, ironically, taken it off when he went paddleboarding so as not to lose it…

Placing it in a jacket pocket, he forgot about it as they packed up and headed back to the car, realising too late that it had fallen out.

I was tagged by one of the local Facebook community, and with low tide due at 2am, I headed straight out that evening.

It was a relatively quick recovery on a very cold but clear night under a full moon, the ring being located in the first search pattern – but outside the indicated area.  I messaged Jojje before it got too late in the evening to let him know that his precious lost ring was now secure.

A couple of days later, we met up and you could see the physical and emotional relief as he slipped it back on his finger where it belonged.

 

 

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New Wedding Ring Lost at Matauri Bay, Found in minutes!

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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James gave me a call at midday yesterday, he had just lost his new wedding ring in the sand at Matauri Bay.

He had been playing with the dog, and felt his wedding ring get pulled off his finger and instantly lost to sight in the sand.

After the family spent some time searching for his ring, he jumped onto Google and searched for « How to find a Ring lost in Sand », and Ringfinders popped up.
I already had the gear in the car from an ongoing search that morning for a ring lost on a property 50yrs ago, and so arrived just half an hour later.

In a matter of minutes I dropped his missing ring back into his hand, and after a couple of pics I was heading home.
It’s nice to have an easy recovery once in a while, one of my recoveries at Matauri Bay took three months and a couple of hundred hours, but the ring did have another three months head start!

If you lose a ring at the beach, please contact an experienced Ring Finder as soon as possible, it can make the difference between minutes and months.

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Lost Kerikeri Ring Found in Car

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Karen contacted me this afternoon asking if I was able to find a very sentimental silver ring that had ‘Just disappeared’ inside her car.

She remembered taking her ring off in the car to place it in the centre console before going to work, but when she went to put it on at the end of the day, it had ‘disappeared’.

She had searched the whole car to no avail, and in desperation phoned me to see if I could help.

I offered some likely places to look, but she had already tried those.

A few hours later, I was firing up the Ferret remote camera to search those sneaky areas inside the car that humans are unable to reach…

Late into the evening, the ring was spotted – tangled in the carseat rails.

Unfortunately the ring had been crushed by the seat moving in the rails, but at least it is salvageable.

A bittersweet victory, she had her precious ring back and is going to make an appointment with a jeweller to restore it to its former glory.

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Sentimental Dog Name Tag Found and Returned – Tutukaka, NZ

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Not all recoveries are planned.

I was doing a casual hunt at Tutukaka the other week, and dug a pets name tag, Rizla.

I always offer found tags to the owners, in case the pet has passed and they would like them as a keepsake.

It had two cell phone numbers on the reverse, one was not connected (unsurprising as the tag had been there a while).

The other put me in touch with Scott, Rizlas previous owner still living in Ngunguru.

Rizla is still alive, although now residing on the other side of the planet, in the UK.

Scott was very pleased to hear I had found it and met me in Ngunguru the other day so I could hand it back to him.

 

 

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