Rent Metal Detector Madison Tag | The Ring Finders

Lost Ring Verona, WI – Garden Find

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

Check out this lost ring story about a co-worker of mine.  It took two trips, with one of them in the cold rain!  Lucky for him, he skipped the Google search for Rent Metal Detector Verona and just called me.  He has followed my other lost ring stories and metal detector searches over the years. We’ve actually joked about how often he loses his ring, and how it’d only be a matter of time before he called me.  Well last month he lost his ring and needed a metal detector to find it.

Lost Ring Verona, WI

Kyle was planting raspberries along a fence. He thinks it fell off when he removed his gloves to shake a neighbors hand. I thought we’d have trouble with the metal nails and posts in the fence, but it wasn’t too bad. I almost immediately got a nice good strong gold signal when searching along the fence.  However, all I found was 2 iron nails from when the fence was built. Experience told me that the signal still had to be there.  Gold and Iron are in two completely different ranges on my metal detector, so I kept searching the area.  Very next target was the ring we were looking for.  This was lost ring found and returned #52 for me.  Turns out 52 was Kyle’s high school football jersey number.  Crazy!

Here’s the full story, including testimony and additional pictures from Kyle.  http://www.lostandfoundring.com/rent-metal-detector-verona/

Have you lost your ring?  Looking to rent a metal detector in Madison, WI or surrounding area?  Look no further and give me a call.  My rates are very reasonable, often less than the cost to rent a metal detector on your own.  I have operated www.LostandFoundRing.com for the past 3 years.  I’d love to help you find your lost ring next!  Remember time is the #1 differentiating factor between a lost ring and a found ring.

 

Lost Wedding Band in Lake Mendota – Madison, WI

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

ringLakeMendota2016Smile

Robert lost his ring the day after they got married!  While on their honeymoon, Liz, the brides mother, jumped to action.  She searched online for ways to find a lost wedding ring, and discovered  our business website, www.LostandFoundRing.com.  She was surprised that there was a Ring Finding Service in town – it was almost too good to be true!  She called to make arrangements for us to come out and search for the ring.  It was lost in chest deep water off of a pier on Lake Mendota, Madison, WI.  She wanted to keep it a secret in the event we didn’t find it – the newlywed couple was devastated enough having lost the wedding band the day after their wedding, it would be worse if we searched with a metal detector and couldn’t find it.

ringLakeMendota2016RingWe arrived on Saturday afternoon with our metal detector and our new Stealth Metal Detecting Sand Scoop, which has been a welcome addition to our tool set.  The construction of the scoop is like none other I’ve used.  It also has reduced our retrieval time, as the target object is typically in the scoop on the first attempt.  Using our old scoop, it might take 2 to 4 attempts to retrieve the target item.  After setting up a physical grid in the water using PVC pipes, we began searching for the lost wedding band in Lake Mendota, a signature lake in Madison, WI.

After only 15 mins, I had Robert’s ring in the bottom of the Stealth.  Liz quickly called Robert and Heidi, the newlyweds to come over to their lake house.  The YouTube video below captures the moment we returned the ring to them – priceless.   The story was so good, the local NBC news station did a story on how the ring was lost and found.  The link to this story is also below.

NBC15 News Story by Morgan Wolfe: Husband Loses Ring Day After Wedding

Lost and Found Ring YouTube Video of the Ring Return: Newlywed Lost Ring Found with Metal Detector – Madison, WI

 

What’s Your Hobby – Madison Ring Finder

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

Recently, I wrote a blog post for a local blog called Madison Mom’s Blog.  They were gracious enough to allow me to be a Guest Contributor.  The blog post covers how I got into Metal Detecting, becoming a Ring Finder and why I feel it’s so important to find a hobby to do with your kids.

Madison, WI Ring Finder – What’s Your Hobby?

 

Lost Ring Found – Castle Rock Lake with Video

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

ringCastleRockLakeBoat_crop
We recently were called up for a hunt to Castle Rock Lake, WI. Ring was lost at Alcatraz Island. We spent around 1.5 hours just trying to find the location they lost it in. The woman knew she had lost it there, but when we returned the landscape of the lake was totally different. The weekend before there were hundreds and hundreds of boats … the day we went up there were 5.

For the other lake hunters reading this, they can appreciate the difference that makes when trying to find a location in a lake. There are few landmarks to « grid » against. We had one photo taken from the day she lost it – which ended up being our treasure map. We spent 1.5 hours matching up that photo with the landscape, tree by tree. Then once we felt we were in the right location, I set up my 4 PVC pipes, which I use as grid markers in lake searches. 15 mins later – bingo. That feeling of pulling something so valuable out of a wide open lake is incredible.

We’ve started to GoPro our hunts, so below is a video from that day. I love capturing that moment we either show / tell someone we found their ring – truly priceless as you will hear in this video. I’ve also included a link to the full story of how the ring was lost and found from the woman’s point of view.

 

http://www.lostandfoundring.com/lost-ring-castle-rock-lake-you-found-my-ring/

 

 

ringCastleRockLakeEmily_crop    20150725_121002_crop

25 Year Work Anniversary Ring Lost and Found – Another Reason Not to Rent a Metal Detector in Madison

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

DSC01510_crop

I received an email from Al on Easter Sunday. I was up at my sister’s house in La Crosse, so I wasn’t able to call Al back right away. I did exchange some emails back and forth to ensure that this wasn’t a recent loss, as timing is so important when attempting to find a lost ring. The quicker you can get our on site, the higher likelihood you have of finding your lost ring.

The next day Al and I finally connected via phone. Al explained that the ring was a men’s gold ring, with a black onyx center stone with diamonds along the side. He had received the ring as recognition for 25 years of service from a local insurance company. Al explained that he was out mowing his lawn on his riding mower. Behind Al’s lot is a common greenway, which he frequently mows and maintains – almost like part of his own yard. He approached a set of trees which hadn’t been trimmed recently – so the branches hung down low. In order to mow around the tree, Al had to raise up the branches with his hand as he passed under the tree on his mower. While doing this, one of the small braches hooked around his ring and when he let go of the branch, the ring was ripped from his finger and flung off into the grass. He stopped his mower, got off and got a leaf rake. He raked the entire area, hoping to stir up the ring. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to find anything.

A year passed, and Al always wondered if his ring was still out there. One day, he was reading the Sunday paper and came across a story by Doug Moe, a local reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. The story was about our Ring Finding activities (http://host.madison.com/news/local/columnists/doug-moe/doug-moe-the-man-who-finds-lost-rings/article_3ef64cca-adf5-5735-8399-4f6e440631e0.html). Al read the story and wondered if I would be able to find his ring he lost the previous year. Al had always thought about renting a metal detector, but was worried he wouldn’t know how to work it. Al did the right thing by calling us. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of people renting a metal detector – only to become completely frustrated after only a couple of mins.

I told Al I would need to check with my wife to see what our plans were, and we tentatively planned to get together over the weekend. After hearing Al’s story, I knew that I would be able to find his ring. If you know the exact area and moment you lost your ring – someone with a metal detector will find it, almost 100% of the time (unless someone else finds it first J).

After hanging up the phone with Al, I talked with my wife and the weekend was free. Only problem was it looked like rain for the next 7 days. If you read my other stories, you’ll know that I metal detector with my two kids. I told them the story about Al’s ring, and they started to get excited. You see, we had been on 3 previous hunts where we did not find the ring we were looking for. We are scheduled to go back on all three, as they were all lost between 1 and 8 years ago, and we haven’t given up yet. Al’s ring sounded to me like a slam dunk. Unfortunately, it was Monday night and the UW Badgers were playing for the National Championship against Duke – first time since 1941. We have season tickets and love Badger Basketball. Tipoff was a little after 8:00 … it was 5:45. I looked at the kids and said, “Maybe we just go out and take a look at the site and see what we find?” They were totally on board, and we were all excited to break our dry streak. We jumped in the van.

Al only lived about 15 mins away, however, as we pulled into his driveway it started to rain. Argh. We decided to give it a shot anyways, and headed to the backyard. Al explained how he lost again, and we started to search the area. We got some hits right away, but all turned out to be junk. You’d be surprised how much junk is buried in your backyard. I always tell people not to get discouraged when we don’t find their ring right away, and we assured Al that we’d keep looking until we found it. I widened the search area around the tree, not knowing how far that branch might have flung the ring. After about 20 mins, my daughter says to me, “That tree over there looks a lot like this tree.”  I’m not sure if Al heard her or not, but a min later he said, “Maybe it was closer to that tree.” Sure enough, after moving over … the very first hit we got was Al’s ring – about an inch below the grass.

Al was relieved to have the ring back on his finger, his wife also was surprised we were able to find it … and even in the rain! We quickly returned home to watch Bucky play a heck of a game, but came up short in the end.

Thanks for the reward Al and so glad we were able to get that ring back on your finger.

20150406_192957_crop

Amazing Lost Ring Story – Found Moments Before Big Snow Storm

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

DSC07510_web

My husband was helping me carry groceries from the car one evening when I noticed he seemed upset about something. I asked him what was wrong. He said that while I was shopping he was working on the computer and noticed that his wedding ring was missing from his hand.

I told him not to worry about it, after all hadn’t he recently scoffed when I had my own ring repaired that he couldn’t understand why we still bothered to wear wedding rings since we’d been married 25 years, everyone knew we were married, and it wasn’t like we would ever split up. A marriage is not a ring, I reminded him. A ring is just stuff. But John was clearly deeply upset. So I headed outside with a flashlight to search in the snow in the spot where he thought he’d been standing when the ring fell off his hand.

John is blind, and for many who are blind losing things is a regular part of life. One does not notice the gloves left behind in a friend’s car or the red-and-white cane left on the seat of a city bus. One is unable to see the phone that slips out of a pocket to fall silently into the snow or the keys that drop without a sound. Losing things is one of the recurring indignities of losing your vision and so it is for John. Misplacing things leaves him tense and frustrated, as if blindness has just scored another point leaving him scrambling once again to keep possession of the things in life that are most valuable to him, the intangible most of all.

John thought he may have lost the ring while playing with his guide dog in the snow but when I searched the spot with their footprints I didn’t see anything glinting in the flashlight beam. He was afraid the ring may have slipped off his finger while they were at work on campus, maybe while taking a mid-day break to play a game of tug-of-war outside the physics building. In fact he wasn’t sure when he lost the ring as he can’t see his hand. It may have been gone for weeks he feared.

That night he was sleepless over the loss of the ring. Even though I kept assuring him it was no big deal, it could be replaced, he was not consoled. Blindness was winning again.  First thing in the morning I started calling around to rent a metal detector, but soon realized this was not a feasible plan.  We’d be dragging the detector all over the city as there were several spots where John thought the ring might have fallen into the snow. And there was no guarantee we’d even figure out how to use it properly.

I kept putting on my coat and boots, going outside, searching the spot on the hill where John said he’d been standing when he thought the ring might have slipped off his hand. I’d get down on my hands and knees, search every inch of the frozen grass and snow, searching again and again. I had to find that ring! I had to see my husband happy again.

While searching for a local store that rented metal detectors, one of the hits that came up on Google was www.TheRingFinders.com. I exchanged a few messages with Dan Roekle and it was clear he was our best bet for finding the ring.

Dan and his kids came over to our house after work with their metal detector and other equipment in tow. We didn’t think there was much chance of finding the ring that evening as it was already dark, not to mention bitterly cold. But Dan wanted to get started and at least get a look at the first search site. Anyhow a Midwestern blizzard was bearing down, predicted to dump a half-foot of snow on the city, obliterating any tracks of where John and his dog had been.

I turned on the house lights, opened the garage door to flood the driveway with light and passed out flashlights. A group of us huddled in the cold to watch as Dan dropped a wedding ring made of the same metal as John’s onto the frozen trampled ground. The detector chirped, its screen lit up with a digital reading, and Dan began slowly making his way up and down the hillside, maneuvering the detector over snow and ice, listening for a tone similar to the one triggered by the test ring.  The detector softly chirped every few moments as Dan passed a tree and he theorized that landscape stakes or discarded nails from a roofing job were to blame. “There’s a lot of metal in this hill,” he said.

It was clear John and I would have never been able to locate his ring with a rented metal detector. He’d been guiding the detector over the ground for only about five minutes when it chirped loudly and Dan announced a reading in the range of the test ring. “We’ve found it,” he said with certainty and you could almost hear the gasping of all the frozen breaths. His son Carter knelt in the spot where his dad and the detector pointed, and with a water-proof pin pointer worked to zero-in on the precise location of the ring in the snow. Carter scraped and dug through the snow and ice and within moments held it up as a whoop arose.

I may have been the most astonished as the ring had been pressed into the frozen earth in the exact location where I had searched on my hands and knees many times that day without spotting it. It was the spot where John had been standing when he pulled off his gloves after playing with his dog and leaned over to pick up the harness.

Thank you, Dan, Carter and Kylie!

Judy and John

 

Ring_web

Lost Ring in Garden, Don’t Waste your Time Renting a Metal Dectector – Call a Ring Finder! – Madison, WI

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

DSC03919_small

I took a day off from work to take care of several errands around town that had piled up, so I was driving a lot, stopping in several businesses, and crossing many parking lots.  Later in the day, I worked in my yard, weeding and cutting back branches with my pruners.  I usually wear gloves when I’m gardening, but I didn’t think I’d be out for very long that afternoon, so I skipped the gloves.  (Never again!)

Among other things, I inherited crooked little fingers and big knuckles from my father.  I’m also left-handed, and my sister had given me some left-handed pruners.  The big knuckles mean that my wedding ring has had several modifications to make it fit my finger right, with the last being hinges on the sides and a clasp on the palm side of the ring.

After I had done more gardening than I planned, I had another errand to run, and when I looked at my left hand on the steering wheel, my stomach dropped about a foot when I realized my wedding ring was gone and I had no idea when – or where – I had lost it.  Because I’m usually pretty aware of it, I thought I must have lost it in the garden – but where?  I was all over the yard and it could be anywhere – in the mulch, in the dirt, in the grass, in the overcrowded hostas, in the birdfeed bin – anywhere.

When I got home, my husband and I started to search, but it was getting dark, so we decided to try again later.  On my next day off, I checked with the places that I had visited on the Thursday that I lost the ring, but no one had seen it.  I still suspected it was in the yard, but I still didn’t know specifically where.

My husband kept up the search over the next several days, and I borrowed a metal detector from someone who answered my plea on our neighborhood message board.  But I quickly realized that I did not have the skill (or the time to learn the skill) to use it effectively.  Dan later told me that this is common when people rent a metal detector.  Feeling more and more discouraged, I checked the Lost and Found listing on Craigslist, where a title jumped out at me: “Lost Ring?”

That listing led me to the www.TheRingFinders.com website and to Dan Roekle, who I contacted. After coordinating our busy schedules, he and his son Carter came over on a Saturday afternoon.  I showed them the two specific places in the yard that I thought were the most likely places where my ring was likely to be.  Dan commented on the large number of pieces of metal that he was getting hits on, mostly from the roof replacement that we had a few years back.  He showed me one of the pieces and then he continued his search.  A few minutes later, he came back to where I was and with a totally straight face, said “Sometimes we find other things, too” and opened his hand.  There was my ring!  He had found it in the middle of the leaves of a hosta plant – the perfect place to hide.  The grin on my face still hasn’t gone away!

And there’s one more thing my father gave me – he was a clergyman who married my husband and me, so part of the service was blessing our rings.  He died seven years ago, and knowing that I have back the ring that he blessed, means more to me than I had ever thought it would.  Thank you so much, Dan and Carter!

Faith

 

DSC03914_small

 

Unforgettable 4 Year Wedding Anniversary – Lost Ring at Devil’s Lake State Park, Wisconsin Dells

  • from Madison (Wisconsin, United States)
Contact:

DSC02050_small

Mandy and I were looking forward to a long weekend to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary.  After enjoying a night at Madison’s Concert on the Square, a round of golf another day and exploring some of Wisconsin’s hidden gems we decided to meet family at Devil’s Lake State Park for a pleasant Saturday afternoon.

The sun was shining and Max (our beagle) was by our side.  After a full day of activities, including Wollersheim Wine, New Glarus Beer and of course cheese curds in hand, we decided to hop in the lake.  Although the water was chilly, the volleyball was flying and we were having a great time.  Not even five minutes in the water, the weekend became ever so memorable.  I turned to Mandy and calmly told her my wedding ring had just flung off my finger. She thought it was a joke until she glanced down at my hand.

I was able to see exactly where my ring hit the glossy water but the vision didn’t last long as it disappeared into the cloudy lake water.  Everyone froze … not a movement was made.  A friendly family on the beach offered their snorkeling gear to us to aid in the search. I stayed put while Mandy and family member Cody swam in circles, periodically coming up for air while trying not to stir up the mucky sand on the lake floor.

We thought it would be easy to spot a shiny ring sitting atop the muck but we were sorely mistaken.  After the remaining afternoon and the entire evening (over 5 hours in total) was spent searching, daylight was gone and we called it quits.  Needless to say the ride home was quiet.

We threw around ideas: « Should we go back and search the next day? », « Do we call the jewelers right away? », « Call the insurance company? ».  Late Sunday night as we were getting ready for the week ahead it dawned on us, maybe there are such people as treasure hunters?  It was worth a Google search at least.

Sure enough, the first website that popped up was www.TheRingFinders.com.  We entered Wisconsin Dells as the location and a man by the name of Dan Roekle was revealed.  I got on the phone right away and explained exactly what happened.  His response, « We’ll find it, guarantee it. » While we knew nothing is ever 100%, his statement was enough to bring a huge smile to Mandy’s face.

The very next day, Dan and I coordinated our schedules and decided to meet at Devil’s Lake in the evening. Cody and I headed up to the State Park and after securing the proper paperwork from the Park Warden to use a metal detector in the park, we headed to the infamous spot where my ring was lost. Dan often takes his two children with him on treasure hunts, teaching them patience while having fun at the same time. I stayed back as to not stir up the sand.  After only five minutes, Dan came back with his son by his side and sadly told us the conditions just weren’t ideal that evening to search for the ring.

My heart sank.

Mandy was going to be so disappointed? The ring itself wasn’t important but the sentiment and memories behind it were invaluable.

Not even 10 seconds later with a huge smile on his face, Dan’s son pulled his hand out of the water and revealed my ring!!!  I couldn’t believe it.  After spending our entire Saturday afternoon in the water, it took them only five minutes to locate and dig up my ring, which had sunk about 3 inches below the mucky sand.  I got Mandy on the phone and tried to tell her the conditions just weren’t right.  Of course, she could tell by the tone of my voice that wasn’t the case.  When I told her, she was overjoyed and couldn’t believe how quick the ring was retrieved!  The ring is now safely back on my finger and after four years I finally got it re-sized as to avoid anything like this in the future.

Thank you Dan and family for your enthusiasm and confidence.  Although it’s just a ring, it means a lot to us and we are incredibly grateful for your assistance. One thing is for certain, we will probably never forget our four year wedding anniversary!

 

Best,

Allan and Mandy G.

 

10544324_1478125799094131_9105858152143721218_n                   DSC02047_small

Alan’s Text to His Wife Right After Finding the Ring                          The Lost Ring