March 8th, 2009 by Brad Lovell

Caroline lost her stunning Diamond Ring in the backyard of her friends house. She had been for a swim, and placed her watch and other jewellery on the towel. When returning from her swim, Caroline lifted the towel causing her jewellery to drop in the grass area around the pool. She managed to find everything except her Diamond Ring. After many hours of searching, Caroline decided to hire a metal detector from Bunnings. The metal detector Bunnings rented out was a Minelab Excalibur machine, which is a brilliant metal detector…but just not the right detector for this particular job. The Excalibur is a machine which can detect up to, and over a foot in depth. So when Caroline and her friends tried searching with this detector, they we’re receiving signals all over the place. And to make matters worse, the fence surrounding the pool was made from metal, which was also making the detector go crazy. After having no luck with the rented metal detector, Caroline decided to give me a call. As always, I was more than happy to help. After a long yet scenic drive to Pitt Town, a suburb near Windsor in Sydney’s North West, I found the property where Caroline had lost her Diamond Ring. Caroline greeted me and showed me the area where her Jewellery had dropped. After asking a few hundred questions, I began my search. I started out by lowering the power setting of my Detector. I figured the ring should still be on the surface, so by reducing the power setting I would eliminate any deep targets. After tuning the detector, I set off scanning the area within the pool fence. This is where Caroline’s other jewellery had dropped, so one would assume the ring would be close by. But, as what always seems to be the case, the Ring was not in this area. So I tried the other side of the pool fence. Once again, no luck. It was time to try a different side. Once again, on the other side of the fence of where the rest of Caroline’s Jewellery had dropped. This time, I received a signal. The signal was very scratchy, and I almost ignored it. But as always when doing a search for someones lost ring, I investigate every little noise I hear. After holding down the pin point trigger, the display mentioned the target was 0.5 inches deep. I began to part the grass with my fingers, and there it was. A big beautiful Diamond ring sparkling in the green grass. This was a learning experience for me. Normally I have an idea if the target is a ring by the tone, and target number displayed on the detector’s screen. But in this particular case, the target was very broken, similar to a foil tone. This could have been because the ring was close to another target which the detector was trying to discriminate..such as a piece of iron. It definitely has nothing to do with the quality of the ring. Something I will definitely keep in mind for future jobs. As I walked towards Caroline with her ring in my hand I observed a look on her face I am now very familiar with. It is the look of excitement, relief and extreme happiness, all rolled into one. After a few jumps for joy, Caroline thanked me kindly for finding her lost ring. Caroline, if you happen to read this post, please feel free to send me a photo of your beautiful diamond ring. As always, my iPhone does not do a great job of capturing just how stunning this ring is

February 14th, 2009 by Brad Lovell

I received a phonecall from Jackie about a week ago. Her daughter had lost a gold ring in the backyard of their house. Before going for a swim, Jackie’s daughter placed her towel on the fence, and then placed her ring on top of the towel. After a swim, she grabbed the towel, forgetting the ring was placed on top. The ring fell, but no one was sure where. Jackie hired a metal detector and searched the backyard for signals, but had no luck in recovering the lost ring. She finally gave up, and called me over to try and find it. Jackie and her family live in FaulconBridge, in the Blue Mountains. This is normally out of the area I service, but Jackie sounded like a nice lady on the phone, so I really wanted to help. Unfortunately my DFX metal detector is still in for repairs, so I had no choice but to use my Excalibur Underwater Detector. As it turns out, it was raining when I arrived at Jackies, so I would have been unable to use the DFX detector anyway. After being shown the area where the ring possibly dropped I got to work. After searching under some shrubs besides the pool, I moved the detector towards a grass area close to a garden. The Excalibur gave out a nice smooth loud signal which normally means Gold! I started parting the grass aside with my screw driver, and saw a glimpse of gold between the blades. There it was, the beautiful ring pictured above. After a quick 10 minute search, the ring was back in the hands of its owner. Lucky for me this was a quick job, being Valentines Day my girlfriend was not too happy I was off metal detecting. But thanks to Jackie giving me such a generous reward, i’m sure we will have a nice dinner tonight