She lost her gold wedding ring today whilst decorating and it went down a gap in the floorboards.
Her husband was at work and phoned me to retrieve it. I lifted the floorboard and could see the ring but I could not reach it with my arm.
I said "I have just the thing in the van to get that" and she relpies "I'll bet it's a magnet on a stick, I've seen them used before"
Did you tell her it must be gold plate? :-)
Perhaps all her other "gold" jewellery *is* magnetic.
"Your husband asked me to come round and sort you out. I have just the thing in my trousers to get that, but I'll need to get it wet first."
Of course. But first melt it down witha mini-furnace, mix in some iron fillings and let it cool. Then use that magno-stick to retrieve the ring. Melt it down again and ahhh...invent a magnetic centrifuge to remove the iron filings. re-cast the ring and forge the assay marks. Easy. :-)
But you depend on such people for your employment! Be thankful.
You make it sound so easy ...
Hope she wasnt; watching me as I've used those magnetic sticks to pick up things that aren;t magnetic. As it's a convinent tool and I usually know where it is ( well 50/50) I use it for all sorts of things, I just attach either double sided tape to the end or sometimes blu-tak, doubled over masking tape, it's useful for picking up dropped cable ties even paper slipped behind filling cabinets. I'd certainly use it on a Gold ring. :-)
You'd think that she might have sussed that her ring isn't gold, then.
She was going to laugh at ARW when the ring didn't stick.
No need. Since iron and gold have different densities, an ordinary centrifuge would do.
You can power it with the motor from the angle grinder you used to make the iron filings.
Well ok then it's even easier isn't it - but not as much fun. Maybe the large Hadron Decider [sic] could be utilised somehow - anything to get a good look at it.
I have my Stick of Getting Things, which is a piece of bamboo cane with a hook on one end a magnet from a disk drive on the other.
Neat, but are the cameras actually worth retrieving? I suppose people want the memory cards back?
I've known Nikonos's recovered with distilled water/isopropyl alcohol, but that's from seawater. Probably better off claiming on the insurance.
(Thinks; Where *is* my Nikonos?)
Isn't a Nikonos an underwater camera and therefore meant to be submerged?
Yes.
Sometimes they leak.
Besides which you still can't see them at the bottom of the river...
Andy
Although with the flashgun on, mine floats.
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