Hi-tech barn hunt turns up lost diamond (From Wiltshire Times)

Hi-tech barn hunt turns up lost diamond

2:00pm Friday 11th January 2013 in Wiltshire

Farm shop manager Liz Nelson called in hi-tech friends when she lost a Tiffany diamond earring in a barn while sorting out Christmas trees.

Mrs Nelson, who works at Plank’s Farm Shop, near Devizes, was beside herself at the loss of the expensive earring, given to her by her husband.

The earrings had been a wedding present and one went missing while she was sorting through the trees at the Old Potato Yard at Lydeway, next to the farm shop.

She knew two of her friends – Jeremy Knibbs and Svetlana Bykova, who live at Dilton Marsh, near Westbury – were members of the Trowbridge Metal Detector Club, so rang them for help.

The couple turned up on Friday afternoon, but it turned out to be a more complicated operation than at first thought.

Mr Knibbs, who designed the farm shop’s logo, said: “Inevitably, the barn floor was littered with nails and many small bits of random metal.”

With light fading, the couple agreed to come back on Saturday morning to resume the search.

Ms Bykova, who brought along her state-of-the-art E-Trac metal detector, said: “The earring Liz showed us was beautiful – a chunky diamond – but, unfortunately, only a very small amount of metal is in the mount.

“To Jeremy’s poor old Hawkeye detector, it was virtually invisible and even with the E-Trac we knew it wasn’t going to be easy to find with such a weak signal.”

However, after an hour or so, Ms Bykova and her E-Trac were triumphant. Against the odds, the earring was found among the stone chippings on the floor.

Mrs Nelson said: “I am absolutely thrilled and can’t thank Jerry and Svetlana enough.

“I’d found the spring clasp from the earring the day before, so I was able to reunite the two pieces.

“I will never wear them to work again.”

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