Doing a little project in the yard and dowsed the location of the water service from the curb.
Wife was watching and thought I was nuts.
She wanted to try her hand, but couldn't get even the slightest twitch from the copper wires.
I showed her how to hold the wire so there was no tension but nothing worked.
Weird.
I guess some can and some can't.
I've tried over the years to show guys on my crew how to mentally reverse the polarity of their boots so mud doesn't stick to them. Most aren't able to master it either.
Where I work, one day I saw a guy from the gas company dowsing for gas lines.
The building is (I think) over 100 years old and I am quite sure, there are numerous utilities of various flavors running all over the place. Apparently, dowsing can work better than other locating methods in this case.
I have personally seen a section of old (really old) water pipe. Pine log, hollowed out. Have been told some are still in use around the area.
Dowsing still blows my mind. I know the studies say the results are "no better than chance," but the studies be wrong! I remember as a teenager watching my father find an old water line into a barn. I thought it was shenanigans. But he lined me out and I was able to do the same.
At least you know your wife isn't a witch! 😉
Had a client who changed me from a skeptic to a believer. He was a retired aeronautical engineer (40 years with Boeing). After he retired he discovered he could dowse for water wells. I accompanied him on several occasions where not only did he pinpoint the location for a well, but he estimated the GPM that it would produce. I didn't believe it until they drilled the wells, hit water, and they produced within 1 GPM of his estimate. From what I understand he was always successful. He was completely amazed that he could do this and had no comprehension how or why it worked.
Because it's kind of magical, some people read more into it that I think is possible....type of pipe....how deep...how many gallons per minute, ect. ect.
However it does work and my dad is very good at it. He once lost his favorite pocket knife on a hillside and used a dowsing rod to find it. Weird.
You can count me a skeptic.
FWIW I can often find buried iron pins without electronic aides, but don't call me Scheonstedt.
JB, post: 422191, member: 346 wrote: Doing a little project in the yard and dowsed the location of the water service from the curb.
Wife was watching and thought I was nuts.
She wanted to try her hand, but couldn't get even the slightest twitch from the copper wires.
I showed her how to hold the wire so there was no tension but nothing worked.
Weird.
For folks who think it's bunk, I take two Dr. Pepper or Coke bottles, drill a hole in the tops (1/16) and bend two pin flags and then insert them. The user holds the bottles and the flags are free to spin. It amazes people.
Just because I'm skeptical doesn't mean it doesn't work. Years back when I finally cobbled enough scratch together to drill a water well on my property I tracked down one of the old timers who had an reputation as an excellent dowser. The area where I live is on a mountain and water is very hit and miss, numerous 300'-400' dry holes all around me. Plunking down 10K to drill a well with no guarantee of finding water, I figured what did I have to lose paying someone $50 to witch the spot to drill. Old man showed up and cut a green forked willow branch and walked the property, coming back to the same spot where he said there were two underground streams crossing. Old man said if we drilled just a foot one way or the other, we could possibly miss them, so I RP'd the spot and that's where I had the driller sink that well. Sure enough, found water at two depths and I was elated. I asked that driller if he believed in the old man's witching. No way he said. How many wells have you drilled that this old timer witched? 19. How many were dry? Not a one. Best $50 bucks I ever spent.
Dad spent time dowsing a well location once on a 40 acre parcel and when he showed the land owner the spot...the guy sounded pretty skeptical/amazed. He walked a couple feet over to a rock and rolled it over. Under it was an old wooden hub with a piece of red cloth tied around it.
That was the location that a lady dowsed many years earlier using a willow branch. That's where they drilled and they did get decent water for the area.
Another time he dowsed a buried water pipe with some bent bailing wire...right down to the location of the 90å¡ elbow. We cut a 6" plug of sod out of the lawn and hit the elbow about 12" down.
There is something to it other than dumb luck or coincidence.
Kris Morgan, post: 422213, member: 29 wrote: For folks who think it's bunk, I take two Dr. Pepper or Coke bottles, drill a hole in the tops (1/16) and bend two pin flags and then insert them. The user holds the bottles and the flags are free to spin. It amazes people.
I'll have to give it a try.
My dad dowses low spots in the bedrock (buried drainages) when we are mining. He's spot on every time we excavate. Works for our purposes.
My grandfather (born 1902) was the Electrical Engineer in charge of traffic lights here in Salt Lake City, back in the old days. He worked for Lester Wire (the 'inventor' of the traffic light) from about 1933 on. They used to dowse for cables and pipes in the road before digging. It was just what they did. Later Grandpa was also in charge of fire alarm pull boxes (anyone remember these) and that was another set of wires running all over town to the fire dispatcher. And then later, the burglar alarms at all the local banks were added to the wire nest and terminated at the Police station. I can remember helping him troubleshoot wires when I was a young kid. I always thought it was cool to crawl around behind the teller cages and in the vaults.
If you are familiar with Salt Lake City, they had a East West / North South signal in the center of 200 South and Main Street. Later they added additional signals going North and South. Every signal was the opposite of the ones north and south. So they only needed one controller (I happen to have said controller in my basement) which controlled the whole string of lights. At the time, since there were no crosswalks, it was possible to drive from the North end of State Street to the last light on the South without stopping if you traveled 22 miles per hour.
When I was about 8 years old, my grandfather started training me to douse in his back yard and around the local parks. We also doused for water wells. The training progressed on a regular schedule for a decade. For the last 50 years, I have been somewhat of a go-to-guy for dousing wells, and occasionally I will still look for wires or sewers with my rods. I believe that they work just as well looking for section corner and quarter stones as they do for pipes and wires. (Man, that was carefully worded.)
Now, I don't believe in dowsing. But I would NEVER drill a well without dowsing it first.
Williwaw, post: 422216, member: 7066 wrote: Just because I'm skeptical doesn't mean it doesn't work.
My mother-in-law dowsed for graves when they were documenting pioneer cemeteries. She demonstrated in a known cemetery with definite results, and my brother-in-law is good at it. My wife tried and got feeble results.
I tried and got absolutely nothing. That, of course, is because I don't believe in it.
Many years ago I worked in an old institution where they were doing significant construction of some sort, and no as-built plans could be found of the steam pipes,etc... So, one of the folks in the maintenance department went out and dowsed the entire campus; IIRC he found all but two crossings of the underground utilities.
It NEVER worked for me, but for others it does seem to work.
In the cemeteries the wires will swing to one side for a female and to the other side for a male. I've seen it done. Amazing!
Holy Cow, post: 422298, member: 50 wrote: In the cemeteries the wires will swing to one side for a female and to the other side for a male. I've seen it done. Amazing!
BS
Cripes, when I first read the title I had to Google "dowse" and as usual immediately jumped to the conclusion that your SWMBO had some sort of Baptismal malfunction that did not agree with her. 😉
Sorry man, I couldn't resist!
Holy Cow, post: 422298, member: 50 wrote: In the cemeteries the wires will swing to one side for a female and to the other side for a male. I've seen it done. Amazing!
You've been grazing in the "medical vegitation" pasture again, eh? (or moo) 😉
Could have something to do with the wider pelvic bones in adult females.
A local, Jack Turner, may he rest in peace, was a true diviner.
When anyone was ready to dig a well, he would show up, cut a forked switch, and walk around and find the water veins and track them down to where they crossed and put the switch in the ground and say dig here.
He would take two clothes hangers and snip them to a length and bend a 90deg and follow a wire or water pipe across your yard.
He could also cook anything you would skin and bring to the table, had a recipe for what ever........
Jp7191, post: 422302, member: 1617 wrote: BS
See this is where you lose me...(identify $ex of corpse) but then again - if science can't prove/explain how it works and yet I know it does. Kind of really makes you think maybe anything is possible.
