Old fella that witched my well years ago, offered to teach me how to do it. We held that willow he'd cut together and as we past over the spot he said to drill, I think he just about snapped my wrists bending that willow down. He was surprisingly strong! When I tried it over the same spot on my own ... nothing. I have tried it using bent welding rods, and had them mysteriously swing together, but why? No idea.
A Harris, post: 422317, member: 81 wrote: 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.
That's what my dad does, he can follow those veins for as long as they run. On my property he has traced them for 3/4 mile.
In one situation, 3 lines intersected in the middle of a drainage right where a willow tree was growing.
One of the lines went right through the middle of a huge juniper tree that all of a sudden died from the drought. It was obvious it was getting more water than all of the other juniper trees.
It's weird stuff when you start thinking about it. How deep does it work?
Williwaw, post: 422323, member: 7066 wrote: I think he just about snapped my wrists bending that willow down. He was surprisingly strong!
The old lady that dowsed that well I mentioned earlier...she was well known for her abilities. Once she allowed a co-worker of mine (as a kid) to hold the willow branch the same time as she "witched" a well. He said it pulled downward very strongly, almost as if she was doing it herself.
It's weird how I kind of don't believe in the willow branch, yet I do fully believe in wire rods....shows you how many preconceived ideas we have.
One time on a construction project, I convinced the contractor that I could witch the location of a lost water pipe. I marked a line and had them dig 13' deep and never found anything. I can find a water pipe in my yard if I know the general location and bearing, but finding a needle in a haystack is difficult.
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.
Ya I do it all electronically now from the comfort of the office. The secret is to have a high res aerial photo overlayed on my survey map. Then I slowly hover the cursor over the map and can interpolate the cursor refresh rate for water.
Or at least that is the line of BS I say when my clients hit water after drilling at the location of the well shown on my proposed plot plan that was only shown to demonstrate proper setbacks.
I am an active participant with a local historical society. Once each year we put on a walking tour of a large cemetery with numerous tales told about a certain number of "residents", especially the early community leaders. One member of our group, a lady about 75 years of age, is an expert at dowsing. We pick a line of headstones and have her walk along over those graves slowly with her dowsing rods. I'm not making this up one bit. She can't see the names, but we can. As she goes along the rods will swing one direction for a male occupant and the opposite direction for a female occupant. Truth.
Funny story. A fellow I knew well decided he was a skilled dowser. He set out to find the perfect spot to drill a well to supply his son's new house on a three-acre tract I had surveyed for them out of the father's farmland. He did not want the son to tie onto the rural water line nearby because he knew there was excellent potential for a well close to the house site. He wandered this way and that and final picked the best spot. The driller went down about three feet and hit water. Lots and lots of water. They had hit a main line of the rural water district pipeline as it angled across the property.
Holy Cow, post: 422345, member: 50 wrote: I am an active participant with a local historical society. Once each year we put on a walking tour of a large cemetery with numerous tales told about a certain number of "residents", especially the early community leaders. One member of our group, a lady about 75 years of age, is an expert at dowsing. We pick a line of headstones and have her walk along over those graves slowly with her dowsing rods. I'm not making this up one bit. She can't see the names, but we can. As she goes along the rods will swing one direction for a male occupant and the opposite direction for a female occupant. Truth.
Funny story. A fellow I knew well decided he was a skilled dowser. He set out to find the perfect spot to drill a well to supply his son's new house on a three-acre tract I had surveyed for them out of the father's farmland. He did not want the son to tie onto the rural water line nearby because he knew there was excellent potential for a well close to the house site. He wandered this way and that and final picked the best spot. The driller went down about three feet and hit water. Lots and lots of water. They had hit a main line of the rural water district pipeline as it angled across the property.
About twenty years ago the city was contemplating rezoning an area for some commercial construction. This was adjacent to some nice older homes occupied mostly by all the tenured wanna-be-ivy-leaguers that work at the university. Of course they fought it tooth and nail. One story that surfaced was the area contained an old cemetery.
I helped with some records research and there was no historic evidence there had ever been a cemetery in the area. Best we could determine (from a grainy 1931 USDA aerial) it had been a dairy, with a large hay barn. All the 'official' inquiries were satisfied but the residents hired an outside forensic outfit (they believed there was a family burial area there) with GPR and lo and behold they came up with an image that looked amazing like a casket with strikingly similar dimensions and depths.
After a big hoofrah they dug up an antique 6' seed drill.
imaudigger, post: 422321, member: 7286 wrote: 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.
I was only saying BS to female / male determination 🙂 I am a firm believer in witching/dowsing. I've done it many times. Even found an iron pipe once during a boundary survey when we left the metal locator at office. Jp
Holy Cow, post: 422345, member: 50 wrote: I am an active participant with a local historical society. Once each year we put on a walking tour of a large cemetery with numerous tales told about a certain number of "residents", especially the early community leaders. One member of our group, a lady about 75 years of age, is an expert at dowsing. We pick a line of headstones and have her walk along over those graves slowly with her dowsing rods. I'm not making this up one bit. She can't see the names, but we can. As she goes along the rods will swing one direction for a male occupant and the opposite direction for a female occupant. Truth.
Ok, sorry I should of never questioned the Holy Cow. I really thought you were trying to mess with us :). Have a nice weekend. Jp
Back when dip needles were the norm we never really found any pins with them, they just made us feel better about saying there was no pin at that location and moving on.
I had a PC during the time (before Schonstedts) that was particularly biased against the Aqua Survey Co.s "dip needles". He wouldn't even carry one in the truck. Our main search tools were: rag tape, sharpshooter and grubbing hoe (if you're not an Okie, that's a mattock). If the wind wasn't too bad the PC had his "secret weapon". He used a large mouth pint Kerr jar suspended with a cord harness. Inside the jar was placed something ferrous (I remember a rather large square iron nut ). If one would hover the jar over the ground slowly, it would "orbit" in an ellipse as it approached a buried ferrous object. The elliptical orbit was not to be confused with the jar rotating because of the cord that suspended it; it was a distinct "orbit" about the stringed axis.
Of course the larger the buried object and the closer it was to the surface, the easier it was to determine its buried location. Seen it work many, many times. The theory of the jarred iron reacting to a buried ferrous object seems obvious to me.
Dip needles worked really good if you were looking for buried MH covers or WM boxes.
Jp7191, post: 422419, member: 1617 wrote: I was only saying BS to female / male determination 🙂 I am a firm believer in witching/dowsing. I've done it many times. Even found an iron pipe once during a boundary survey when we left the metal locator at office. Jp
Ya, I didn't word my response very well. I agree with your sentiments above.
I don't believe the claims to be able to determine male/female...depth to water...gallons per minute....type of pipe....material transported in pipe, ect. ect. However I would be open to an honest demonstration.
James Vianna, post: 422335, member: 120 wrote: Ya I do it all electronically now from the comfort of the office. The secret is to have a high res aerial photo overlayed on my survey map. Then I slowly hover the cursor over the map and can interpolate the cursor refresh rate for water.
Or at least that is the line of BS I say when my clients hit water after drilling at the location of the well shown on my proposed plot plan that was only shown to demonstrate proper setbacks.
My method as well. I like to start with something like this:
https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/gwrp/activities/fundamental_data.html#geo
I was a disbeliever until recently a client showed our field crew how to find a water pipe, I tried it in our own parking parking lot over a water line with the bent coat hangers they brought back and it indeed does work. I can see how there could be science behind water traveling down a pipe and creating an electric field, or its molecules aligning but many have clearly taken this to an extreme level of bullshit. How could a grave put out any kind of electrical field?
City inspectors especially appreciate dowsing in the location of utilities.
roger_LS, post: 422494, member: 11550 wrote: I was a disbeliever until recently a client showed our field crew how to find a water pipe, I tried it in our own parking parking lot over a water line with the bent coat hangers they brought back and it indeed does work. I can see how there could be science behind water traveling down a pipe and creating an electric field, or its molecules aligning but many have clearly taken this to an extreme level of ********. How could a grave put out any kind of electrical field?
I had always been a non-believer until a couple a years ago when on a job doing an as-build of an old city water tank and the city employee asked if I had a coat hanger in my truck that he could use to located the water lines that I needed to locate. After he left I tried it and could feel and see the wires turn when I got over the water lines.
I had been told in the past that you were actually locating the trench because it disturbed the alignment of the ground field. It sounds like you could take a trencher and dig a trench and then cover it up and it could be located, I might test my theory because when I built my house I had borrowed a trencher and trenched a ditch for a proposed water line to a proposed shop building that I never built and filled the trench in about 30 years ago.
Ed
Yup. I tend to believe it is the disturbance from the ambient background.
ekillo, post: 422497, member: 773 wrote: I had always been a non-believer until a couple a years ago when on a job doing an as-build of an old city water tank and the city employee asked if I had a coat hanger in my truck that he could use to located the water lines that I needed to locate. After he left I tried it and could feel and see the wires turn when I got over the water lines.
I had been told in the past that you were actually locating the trench because it disturbed the alignment of the ground field. It sounds like you could take a trencher and dig a trench and then cover it up and it could be located, I might test my theory because when I built my house I had borrowed a trencher and trenched a ditch for a proposed water line to a proposed shop building that I never built and filled the trench in about 30 years ago.
Ed
You can find things other than trenched water lines. There is another way of dowsing that does not involve wire rods or willow branches. It works better for finding non-linear objects.
My dad purchased one of these many years ago.
The top unit is connected to the grip by a smooth bearing. You slowly swing the unit and it will "hit" on targets similar to how the rods swing when you cross the pipe. Difference is you don't have to be walking. Long story short, it took a 9 volt battery, which never seemed to go dead. My dad took it apart and the switches and knobs are just for looks - it was a scam.
Problem is...it actually works. This is how he found his lost pocket knife.
It's not as easy as using metal rods to find buried pipes because there is a certain amount of triangulation required.
It is weird though - I have watched him find some crazy stuff in the woods with it. Never any lost treasure...but I would bet money that if you blind folded him and led him into the woods, he could find his way back to the truck using this crazy device.
We once buried several multi-ounce gold nuggets in the yard and sent him out there to find them using that device.
I stood behind him and watched the rods, they did signal on the nuggets every time. but they also signaled on all of the other metal objects in our yard and he was never able to make sense of it.
I'm thinking for the fun of it, maybe we will find a spot in the woods where there are no signals and try this blind fold test again.
I'm amazed at all the dowsers and yet NO ONE was ever been able to collect the million dollar prize for simply doing it. I guess you missed your chance, so just keep on surveying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge
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.
So, you know where it is in relation to the curb... and probably know where it connects to the house then? interesting.
Andy J, post: 422751, member: 44 wrote: I'm amazed at all the dowsers and yet NO ONE was ever been able to collect the million dollar prize for simply doing it. I guess you missed your chance, so just keep on surveying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge
Dang it! Discontinued in 2015...I missed the cut-off date. 😉
