This is a great plumbing tip, for jewelry lost down a sink:
Beth,
Nice tip, but the thing he said about what kind of vacuum cleaner to
use was not such good advice, i.e., given the presence of water in
the trap below, you’d kill an ordinary household sweeper pretty
effectively. Only do this with a shop-vac, one of those barrel
things that’s expected to clean up water as well as dust. 
Loren
Hi, I just learned a trick that seems pretty handy for saving things
that have gone down the sink or shower drain, without taking the
pipes apart.
Put some stocking or other pine mesh over the tube of a vacuum
cleaner (wet/dry shop is best especially for shower drain that holds
more water). Turn on the motor and objects will be pulled up. The
video I heard about had comments after form people who’d retrieved
diamond earrings, rings and toothbrushes (yuck! I hope they didn’t
use it again!)
Thought it might come in handy some time.
Marianne Hunter
http://www.hunter-studios.com
Marianne,
Put some stocking or other pine mesh over the tube of a vacuum cleaner (wet/dry shop is best especially for shower drain that holds more water).
The wet/dry shop vac is not just best. It’s a must. If you use
anything else for this, any drain will have water in it, and you can
destroy the motor on most ordinary floor vacs. It HAS to be a vacuum
intended for wet pick up.
The same is not true, however, for a useful jewelers variation on
this. Drop tiny items on the floor? Have trouble seeing the things,
perhaps on a carpet or just there? Or perhaps you’ve not dropped just
something, but a whole box or lot of tiny somethings. Do the same
with (this time, any type) vac, and you can pick up a whole lot of
little somethings from the floor with less effort that one by one
with fingernails… My home shop is in my basement or what the
former owners used as a rec room. It has tight low pile berber carpet
glued to the otherwise concrete floor. I didn’t try to pull that up
when I turned it into my shop. Nice to walk on, etc, but finding the
melee that drop is a pain on this carpet, even if it’s tight enough
that things don’t drop down into the surface. Can’t just sweep it up.
But the vacuum with a nylon works fine.
Peter
Well, I’ll never forget that when I was about 16 years old, my mother
asked me one morning,“Were you doing some plumbing late last night?”
Yes, I was. I tried to be quiet, but there was some inevitable
clunking noise as I took apart the sink trap with a couple of
wrenches to retrieve my small post earring. I knew that if I left it
until morning, an early riser would run water in the sink and the
earring would be gone forever. I guess I was already a hands-on, tool
type of girl. By the way, a shop vac would have awakened everyone in
the house, not just Mom. Otherwise it’s a good trick, though!
M’lou Brubaker
Minnesota, USA
I remember reading about a fellow jeweler who had dropped sapphire
melee onto a blue shag carpet using nylons over a vacuum to recover
them. Apparently he recovered over 90% with this method.