Mike Hillis
Well-known member
Poor guy was in the dog house! He lost his wedding band. Come to find out, that wasn't why he was in the dog house though. 
A friend, whom I don't get to see very often, lost his ring while doing chores under the house. When he came up out of the crawlspace and dusted off his cloths, his ring went flying. He and his family searched for it but couldn't find it in all the leaves. So the search went out on FaceBook looking for someone with a metal detector, which eventually led him to call me.
It took a week to get our schedules matched up but I was able to get over there this Sunday afternoon. Looked at the area and discussed the events leading up to the loss with his wife. They were sure the ring went flying when he was out of the crawlspace, not underneath. So I turned on the F5 (stock coil), set the gain to 80 and threshold to -9. 4 tone id mode. Didn't balance it. I just needed to hear the surface targets real good in the wind. I didn't use headphones so she could listen, too. It took 90 seconds to find the ring. In the midst of the iron grunts I got a good zinc tone with a 44 TID number. Bent over and moved some leaves around with my hand and there it was. A nice, plain gold band shining in the midst of the leaves. I would have liked to have seen that looking back at me from a park hunt. It would have purchased another coil I want
She was happy to get ring back, and amazed I had found it so fast. Then I found out what really had him in the dog house. He'd lost some keys the same day in the same area, too. Only he didn't tell me about the keys.
The keys were described to me. At least one of the keys was a brass house key, so I knew that would give me a zinc tone, however the other two keys on the ring were steel and they were on a steel wire ring. Oh no. I'd heard a lot of iron grunts when I was sweeping for the ring and now I'm thinking back trying to recall which one of those iron grunts had gave a zinc tone blimp with it. I didn't recall any. Well, I go back to sweeping the area listing for the zinc tone to peek out of the iron grunts while she went off to call her husband and tell him the good news about the ring. I get through gridding the area with no results before she comes back and asks me if the detector can detect through cinder-blocks because her husband thinks they may have fell into the cinder-blocks that lined the crawl space opening, then she unlocks and opens the cover to the crawl space. I stand there looking down into the crawl space.
At this point I'm building a mental image of me standing down inside the crawlspace opening, which is about 5-1/2 feet deep, knocking holes in cinder-blocks with a hammer any time I hear an iron grunt. I didn't like that picture at all
The tops of the holes in the cinder-blocks are full of leaves and spiderwebs and just for grins I run the coil over the tops of them and low and behold, in one of the blocks about 5" down, supported by leaves caught in spiderwebs were the keys. I didn't say anything. If I were to dislodge them while trying to recover them they'd be somewhere deep inside the cinder block wall. I just bent down and picked up a long twig off the ground that looked hardy enough to support the weight of the keys and stuck it through the key ring so that I couldn't knock them further down the hole by accident, then reached in with the other hand and grabbed them. Success!
She was very happy to recover both the ring and the keys! He was happy to be out of the dog house! I suspect I'll be helping them pick out a metal detector of their very own in the near future based upon the questions I got after the rescue mission was completed.
F5 - the ring and key rescue unit.
HH
Mike
A friend, whom I don't get to see very often, lost his ring while doing chores under the house. When he came up out of the crawlspace and dusted off his cloths, his ring went flying. He and his family searched for it but couldn't find it in all the leaves. So the search went out on FaceBook looking for someone with a metal detector, which eventually led him to call me.
It took a week to get our schedules matched up but I was able to get over there this Sunday afternoon. Looked at the area and discussed the events leading up to the loss with his wife. They were sure the ring went flying when he was out of the crawlspace, not underneath. So I turned on the F5 (stock coil), set the gain to 80 and threshold to -9. 4 tone id mode. Didn't balance it. I just needed to hear the surface targets real good in the wind. I didn't use headphones so she could listen, too. It took 90 seconds to find the ring. In the midst of the iron grunts I got a good zinc tone with a 44 TID number. Bent over and moved some leaves around with my hand and there it was. A nice, plain gold band shining in the midst of the leaves. I would have liked to have seen that looking back at me from a park hunt. It would have purchased another coil I want
She was happy to get ring back, and amazed I had found it so fast. Then I found out what really had him in the dog house. He'd lost some keys the same day in the same area, too. Only he didn't tell me about the keys.
The keys were described to me. At least one of the keys was a brass house key, so I knew that would give me a zinc tone, however the other two keys on the ring were steel and they were on a steel wire ring. Oh no. I'd heard a lot of iron grunts when I was sweeping for the ring and now I'm thinking back trying to recall which one of those iron grunts had gave a zinc tone blimp with it. I didn't recall any. Well, I go back to sweeping the area listing for the zinc tone to peek out of the iron grunts while she went off to call her husband and tell him the good news about the ring. I get through gridding the area with no results before she comes back and asks me if the detector can detect through cinder-blocks because her husband thinks they may have fell into the cinder-blocks that lined the crawl space opening, then she unlocks and opens the cover to the crawl space. I stand there looking down into the crawl space.
At this point I'm building a mental image of me standing down inside the crawlspace opening, which is about 5-1/2 feet deep, knocking holes in cinder-blocks with a hammer any time I hear an iron grunt. I didn't like that picture at all
The tops of the holes in the cinder-blocks are full of leaves and spiderwebs and just for grins I run the coil over the tops of them and low and behold, in one of the blocks about 5" down, supported by leaves caught in spiderwebs were the keys. I didn't say anything. If I were to dislodge them while trying to recover them they'd be somewhere deep inside the cinder block wall. I just bent down and picked up a long twig off the ground that looked hardy enough to support the weight of the keys and stuck it through the key ring so that I couldn't knock them further down the hole by accident, then reached in with the other hand and grabbed them. Success!
She was very happy to recover both the ring and the keys! He was happy to be out of the dog house! I suspect I'll be helping them pick out a metal detector of their very own in the near future based upon the questions I got after the rescue mission was completed.
F5 - the ring and key rescue unit.
HH
Mike
HH jim tn
I could just see you gently going after those keys with a stick! Sort of like a monkey fishing for termites with a blade of grass eh? Good of you to help get a fellow Man out of trouble, I'm sure lots of us could use that kind of help every now and then! 
