I had recently purchased the Excalibur II from Daniel Gerber at DredgeNZ in Christchurch. He chuckled as I left and said “Remember, you only need to find two rings and you have the machine paid off!” Funny man I thought.
I took the machine out onto The Estuary in Christchurch. It’s a large area, so you can guess where I was. I was surprised by how quickly I was finding Lead Sinkers with the machine with the settings basically at what it was straight out of the factory. Set to Discrimination (Disc) and everything else either set to 0 or 1 with the battery and control box strapped to my hip. I stepped out further into the low tide and got a very strong tone. I took the scoop and pulled up some mud, shells and a large ring. I immediately called it Silver, even though it was very black in colour as I had seen Silver tarnish easily in bleach in the past. This ring though had a thick crust and I then changed my mind thinking it was maybe a broken fishing rod ring. I continued detecting and found more Lead Sinkers and with a bag full I made my way home and did a wrap up with my peers online. A lot of suggestions was that Silver can’t be that big for a ring and it might just be Copper. I gave it some lime juice overnight and found the juice hadn’t discoloured, at this point if it was copper or brass we would have a greeny-blue hue in the liquid. It would be one of two things in my mind, Silver or Aluminium. Again, I doubted myself as there were now lines showing along the width of the ring which looked very industrial. My good friend from NZ Detecting Discoveries, Steve (King) William mentioned I should use some Electrolysis to remove some of the crust that just wasn’t coming off. I had used this technique before on other jewellery with limited success. This indeed removed a lot of it with the inside still a bit crusty. He then mentioned #0000 Steel Wool to clear the staining that was created through Electrolysis. This bought it up to a good lustre and I could understand what the lines were. There in front of me on the ring sat a native New Zealand Cabbage Tree, Lancewood, Fern and Nikau. Weighing in at a rounded 0.45ozt this ring was something special.
I googled the details and the size of the ring into google and found a website for Ash Hilton Jewellery based in Nelson, New Zealand. I thought it would be a nice surprise for the end of the working week. I’m pretty sure it was Laurel, Ash’s wife who I was communicating with on Messenger when I broke the news of the find… She was mildly blown away “No. *expletive*. Way!! That is soooooo, sooo wild!! This is the coolest thing ever. I’m going to go through all of our lost wedding ring emails now!” Laurel mentioned that the etchings of the trees were old and they’ve been doing this design for over 20 years now. She was quite emotional.
We’re now in the process of finding the owner through their records with the ring eventually making it’s way home to Nelson, Marlborough. The Minelab Excalibur II has been fantastic and I have also found a $3500 Bulgari ring in the same week with numerous amounts of lead sinkers which I have given back to the fishing community. The Bulgari ring just doesn’t cut the mustard to the home coming the 8mm Silver will have.
