need help to find gold ring......

John Madill

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My niece is selling her house in the country. A couple came to look at it and there was an inspector with them.

the inspector called my niece later and said a new septic system was needed.

and added, by the way, one of the couple lost a gold ring somewhere on the property or at the homeowner shared lake access.

my niece told him to let the couple know that her uncle (me) had a metal detector and that he would be happy to look for it.

that was two weeks ago and i haven't heard anything from them. the couple did decide to buy the house. my niece h:?:as to be out in ten days.

so i know what i'm going to be doing for the next ten days.

it is a good-sized lot, about 50 yards by 100 yards, small rolling hills backed up by a light forest. the homeowners' lake access point is just a gravel drive maybe 30 yards long.

my thought is to take my metal detector, a Vanquish 540, and run it over a gold ring and then notch out everything on either side of that number, leaving in a fudge factor.

and use low sensitivity as it should be pretty much on the surface.

i've hunted some of the property before and only found junk like bottle caps, screws, foil, etc.

there is a lot to dig but i want to zero in on that gold. any advice is appreciated!
 
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I am also looking for a lost ring. Young lady lost her deceased Dads wedding band at the school she attends. I use a Sovereign Gt and gold rings can show up between foil and zinc pennies.

i am not sure that all gold rings will show up in the same area on your machine. I would test it with more than one ring. i USED 15 DIFFERENT ONES.

i have been working a large area and digging anything that is shallow as i turned the sensitivity down to the lowest possible setting as the ring will not be deep.

Do far i have dug a five gallon bucket of trash. But it is a school yard.
 
That's a tall order due to the possibilities of all the places it "could have been lost" in. Second and to me about the most important, is the ergonomics of the gold ring. Was it solid of maybe a rope gold design? Was it perforated and have diamond settings? Was it white or yellow gold. Was it hefty or just a couple of grams? Vdi varies enormously over ergonomics of gold jewelry.

That homeowners' access point would be where I'd hunt first, discrimination -5 to 15. If it's a mans ring, widen the vdi to 21. You might hit a home run there and be done. The rest of the areas mention makes finding it hard.

Do you by chance have a picture of that ring or similar?
 
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i tested a few rings......

I put these three rings in a zip lock bag. One is 10K and two are 14K.

they rang up between 11 to 15 on my Vaqnquish 540, but mostly came in at 13.

i will take that suggestion to test them 1 at a time also.

i don't know anything about the ring except that it should be gold.

had they called me i would have gotten a full description and gone on a mission of mercy. but they didn't.

so now it may be a finder's keepers, assuming it doesn't have great value.

if i find an 18K multi-jeweled ring of great value then i would rethink that.

Knowing that # of 13 i may notch the detector to read 10 to 20 and discriminate every thing else and see what happens.

testing them one at a time might make me change that set of numbers.
 

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Sounds like you may have figured it out.
I have looked for rings for people and a necklace for someone else but never had success.
I would dig like 5 to 14 on a Vanquish.
Same for my Equinox.
 
You didn’t specify man’s or woman’s ring. 10 to 14k women’s on the Equinox and Vanquish can be between 8 and 16. Men’s can be 10 to 18. 18k and higher or really large gold rings can be as high as 22. If there is anyway to find out if it was a man or woman that lost it and whether it was a thin or thick ring would really help narrow it down.

Personally I would not engage in finders keepers on this one. I tend to lose something of greater value when I even think of doing something like that.......
 
Keep your coil high over the ground. It’s on top, or stepped on and shallow.
 
I wonder if the fact that they are buying the place they figure they can get someone to find the ring after they are living there.
They may not be planning on the selling party sniping the ring out from under them and not giving it back.
Everyone has there own level of what is right I guess.
 
Case in point about a gold ring Vdi being off depending on the style and size. This blurry pic is a delicate white gold ring with tiny designed-in holes(a very nice ring.) It weighed 2.7 grams, and read a -4 Vdi on my Equinox. Had she lost it and I'd never seen what it looked like, I would have never gone as low as -4 in my discrimination. I also missed finding a lost ring for a lady a long while back, and she showed me a small area it was lost. I asked if she had a similar gold ring like it and she brought out a small, solid ring she owned. I was sure I'd find it. It was latter that she mentioned that it was a "rope ring" and I figure now that ring surely rang very low also.

My advice? Don't knock yourself out working to find it with the sketchy details you have to work on. jm2c
 

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Oh, i imagine i would return it. Went out this morning and covered a fair amount of the yard.

The likely signals i got showed depths of 4+ inches. I'm expecting to find it pretty much at the surface.

Thanks for the advice all.......
 
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