Shaun is a dedicated, community minded family man with a passion for metal detecting and helping. He works in Information Technology and has a huge desire to do the right thing. This South Australian ring finder service is one way he can help the public recover lost sentimental items.
An Adelaide day care centre phoned to see if I could check their play areas for sharps and metal junk after some contractors worked on improvements. Over 2 days I spent about 4 1/2 hours working my way through the bark chips and found quite the collection or interesting bits and pieces.
Result from 4 1/2 hours making a play area safer
Razor blade and nails found in a day care playground
more sharps from the playground bark chips
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Closer view of some sharps including a razor blade
Nails and tec screws seem to be a favourite for tradies to drop in the bark chips but my personal favourite find must be the razor blade. I am really grateful that I was given the opportunity to run this search and it feels wonderful knowing the kids are going to have a safer time.
Something different from the usual ring search and worth doing …
I was just settling into a quiet evening at home last night when Henley Beach Surf Club phoned around 7.30 asking if I could possibly help a couple near the jetty.
Turned out Zsófia had lost her ring 20 or 30 metres out in chest high water and was very concerned about the bad weather due later.
I grabbed some water proof detecting gear and headed down there to see if I could help.
Once I finally got down to Henley from Hillcrest I found Zsófia and headed out to where her husband Danka was trying to dive down and find the ring, dropped a marker in the water at roughly where they thought the ring was and started work.
I searched about 15m north/ south and about the same east/ west but unfortunately didn’t find the ring before nightfall. The tides looked fairly good for Friday afternoon so I suggested I head back there around midday and try again with the ring possibly out of the water or maybe just in shallow water.
So today I headed back to Henley Beach about 40 minutes before low tide and worked the area again which was in shallow water and worked back up the beach a bit into only shin deep water when I was rewarded with a loud (so shallow) mid tone (where I would expect gold to be) and was able to just lean down and pull the ring out from about 2″ under the sand. I was only searching for 15 minutes or so after sticking a plastic bag over my dry non-waterproof gear in some serious rain.
I wasn’t sure it was the right ring so sent a pic to Zsófia and received an elated and relieved phone call back 🙂 It has now been picked up and is back where it belongs 🙂
Sophia’s ring back with herSophia’s ring and the Minelab Sovereign GTSophia’s ring and the Coiltek WOT used to find it
Gear used was a Tesoro Sand Shark last night in the water and the Sovereign GT and big coil today.
On Christmas Eve Alicia and David walked to a local soccer pitch enjoying some nice Adelaide summer weather. At some stage during the walk David lost his white gold wedding ring and they were unable to find it. A few days later Alica contacted me via facebook and we worked out a time to catch up for a search that evening.
We met up at the Athelstone Soccer Oval and had a chat to work out where the ring could be and I went to work checking the larger areas with a Minelab Sovereign GT, then changing to a Tesoro Tejon near some fencing and finally an old tesoro I keep around with a 4″ hockey puck coil to get right next to metal objects like the fence and playground equipment at the park.
I searched some parts of the oval, then the playground but unfortunately I failed to find it during the 1hr we had and headed home after mentioning that I would probably come back one day to try again.
During the week I asked Alicia if David could draw me a bit of a map in case I went back so I could narrow down the search area a bit and this came back.
David’s map
The following day I decided to go back with this new information to try again. I searched the oval first with 3 passes up and down the path he probably walked, lots of checking at the gates and fence and then after no success I headed to the playground
Phone data of the second search
I swapped the Sovereign GT for a Tesoro in the playground and searched in and out of the playground equipment and around the edge until I finally found it snug up against a metal pole. Not being completely sure it was the right one I send a message to Alicia and kept searching for about another 20 minutes until I had exhausted what I could in the playground and went home.
It turned out it was the right ring so Alicia and David met up with me again and it is now where it belongs.
Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for a loss free 2017.
2016 ended a little disappointingly for me with a search for 3 rings on Friday at Somerton Park. Unfortunately the rings probably ended up somewhere in the surf zone a few days after that big storm stripped sand from the beach. The combination of pounding waves and the beach re-filling with sand after the storm meant that the rings were going to be deep and difficult to track down.
After learning a bit about how they were lost I methodically checked a roughly tennis court sized area gridding north/ south and east/ west. After a couple of hours I picked up a whisper of a signal near the water and dug out one ring at around 12″ deep. So 1/3 and pushing towards impossibly deep.
After another hour I gave up, having not received any worthwhile signals. We had a chat about the best way forward and decided to leave it for some better weather and/ or less sand and headed home.
Saturday was another adventure trying to find a new Apple watch lost in the Murray. After about 10′ deep the water was pitch black and after only about 20 minutes dive time I pulled the pin on the search as too dangerous, too small chance of success and the location a little too ambiguous given the conditions. Signals were everywhere with all the fishing sinkers, metal rubbish etc next to a boat ramp so I had to manually check each signal by hand at up to 15′ in sightless conditions. Just too hard.
So, today I received a call from Tony that the sand/ weather back at Somerton Park was more favourable and it might be worth catching up again for another look. I tuned the Minelab Sovereign GT with every possible setting to get a little extra depth and searched extremely slowly near where the first ring was found. Ring pull, ring pull, … and so on then the slightest change in threshold (background hum) on the detector, not a beep, just a tiny change of note. I decided to dig it and pulled the wedding band out from somewhere around 14″ down- crazy. So 2/2 rings.
Having found the 2 rings now reasonably close to each other I doubled down and did what I could to drag every bit of performance out of the detector and myself. Eventually I nearly missed an even slighter signal, not even a whisper, just a hint of a nulling of the tone. I normally would not have dug this signal but did this time due to it being fairly close to where I found the second ring. Dig, dig, dig, dig … 10″, 11, 12, 13, somewhere near 15″. I kept losing that tiny signal and re-finding it. Eventually I scooped up that 3rd ring at a ridiculous depth thanks to the incredible Sov GT and 15″ Coiltek Manufacturing WOT coil.
I have a feeling the ring owners had given up on them a bit so I couldn’t be happier to return those 3 rings back to Kim. A real challenge pushing machine and me to absolute limits with a lot of luck and the sea/ weather cutting me a bit of slack. Great feeling.
Jenn contacted me via Facebook after her husband’s white gold ring was lost in the back yard. The job turned out to be a bit of a challenge as the grass was on top of wire mesh presumably to stop rabbits borrowing or similar. Fortunately Jenn’s 4yr old son Christian is a gun metal detector operator and was able to show me the ropes finding a fortune in coins.
After a very relaxing 5 minutes accompanied by some friendly fish I found the ring hiding deep in some grass next to a trampoline post.
An absolute privilege to help Jenn out and get that ring back where it belongs. Oh and Christian, you are a legend …
Elena called me late this afternoon after finding my well hidden ad on Gumtree (I need to fix that). Anyway, it turned out George had lost his ring along a street and asked if I could take a look. The job was just around the corner so I packed the car and headed out and was there within 20min or so.
The ring was likely to be on either side of the road, so I spent maybe an hour searching one side then concentrated on the stretch along the other side of the road. Nothing too tricky about it and it was just a matter of time before it turned up under some leaves and bark at the base of a bush.
The only real issue with this one was lots of bottle tops and pull tabs along the road verge, but I was pretty confident of eventually getting the coil over it.
Gear was Minelab Sovereign GT with the smallest coil I have for it (to work in the metal junk) and the ever reliable Garrett Pro-pointer. A nice result and a great big chunk of ring back on George’s finger.
Gemma lost a very sentimental ring in the water at Glenelg on Tuesday. We met up yesterday and I searched for an hour without luck with some difficulties. 1. there were people sun baking in the search area so I had to leave big slabs of beach alone. 2. The water was too rough to search.
I really dislike failed searches so I headed back there today around low tide and managed to search in the water a bit and worked my way out of the water back up the beach. After many passes up and down the beach in the large search area I finally heard that sweet gold sound in a compact round target not too deep and quickly recovered it. Gear was Minelab Sovereign GT with Coiltek Manufacturing WOT coil and the heaviest insulated headphones I could find in the storm like winds.
Here is a pic of the ring complete with sand back where it belongs on Gemma’s finger. A ripper of a ring with family history and a great result.
Trish phoned up this morning after losing her ring swimming yesterday afternoon in Semaphore a popular beach location west of Adelaide. I caught up with her husband Jim today at low tide and we worked out the best search area and how far down the beach it was likely to be.
I started about 5m out of the search area and worked my way down to the water searching about 20m lines each way. After several bottle tops, a pull tab, some junk jewellery and a few coins I picked up that nice rounded, mellow gold sound with a big target just below the surface. I only had to reach in about 1″ of sand and there it was.
A quick wash in the water to remove the sand and it was back with Jim just as Trish turned up to see how we were going. Huge smiles everywhere and a hug from Trish for another successful search at Semaphore.
After that I popped down south for another ring, but unfortunately they couldn’t get down there to give me a rough location so will put that one off for another day.
Mary contacted me via facebook to ask if I thought it was possible to find a ring lost on New Years Eve while swimming. After a few questions it sounded like a fairly easy job and we agreed to meet up the following day at low tide. Given the time and rough depth of water when it was lost I was able to work out roughly how far down the beach to search while Claudia worked out a possible north and south boundary along the beach.
Once I had a rough area to work in I had a guess at a decent place to start and walked my first line. The first signal turned up around 3/4 of the way to the other boundary and after a quick dig in the sand out popped Claudia’s ring. So probably 10 minutes of set up time and 5 minutes of actual detecting.
Caroline called last night after losing a very sentimental ring down at Seacliff, a popular southern beach in Adelaide. Unfortunately it was lost while walking the dog so the search area was huge. We had a bit of a chat trying to work out the most likely areas and even then the search area was about 150m x 50m which is nearly 2 acres.
I separated that area into 3 sub searches, nothing in the first, then 2 hours searching the main walking area- nothing, then only left with the path Caroline would have walked onto the beach from the car. Nothing in the first pass, turned around to head back, walked 2m and there it was. Hiding about 4″ under some powder soft sand was this beautiful and precious ring. Caroline couldn’t believe her luck and looked a little in shock, but the smiles took over she is one very happy, relieved lovely lady.
This search was tricky simply because of the large area involved but with a little detective work and some perseverance we got there.
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