Divining rods for sapphire hunting

Last time I was at central qld gem fields I tested using divining rods, placed a few sapphires on the ground and hey presto walked over with them and they crossed. Has anyone tried using them?
I'm thinking of heading to Inverell district soon keen to give it a try again

I've seen people at Inverell using them and the bloke did get quite a lot of stones but, yeah well, I'd call myself a sceptic. Though I would give it a go sometime just to see for myself whether it works of not.

Aussie Sapphire used Divining Rods to find All their Sapphires when they were Mining... Andrew is a Master at using them.. I was a Sceptic until I saw Him in action.. Never had a go myself...

LW....

Watch from 28:15 to 33:20. Pommies call it dowsing. Different shite, same stain.

[video=480,360]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Igj7bRIpTQ[/video]

I've often seen them used on the Anakie field - pretty impossible to know whether anything is actually happening or not. I've seen dowsers successfully find artesian water - but since water is one of the most abundant substances in the earth's crust, was it simply that the water was there anyway?

I saw an old bloke do it using a handsaw instead of rods, the saw would bend in an unusual manner. Most people watching could get the saw to bend a little - but then this bloke took hold of the other persons hand and the saw bent way over. Let it go and the saw went back up again. Barring it being some kind of stunt, there was definately something unusual happenning. But whether this has any bearing on an ability to find water let alone gemstones, I wouldn't have a clue.

I think the best things for finding sapphires are a strong back to handle all the work and a big heart to handle the dissapointments which are frequent Some basic geological knowledge, the local hands-on knowledge of an old miner who has spent years chasing the stones in that area - this is what you want to equip yourself with imo.

And remember, no matter how much knowledge and planning you have armed yourself with - scientifically proven or otherwise - at the end of the day..........the stones are where you find them

Interesting thing about (water) dowsing - superstition or not, it still persists because on a high percentage of occasions, the dowser actually finds what they are looking for.

The question is why?

The people in the video were shocked to fail in the test because in the field, they nearly always succeed.

Assuming for the purpose of the exercise that there is actually something in it - my first thought would be that the researchers are not actually testing these people at what they claim to be successful at. Not the ones I have seen at least. Logic and reasoning would I think cause us to assume that there is likely to be a difference between a bottle of water or a polypipe filled with water and a full-sized subtererranian body of water.

What we need is a series of proper field tests to determine why these people seem to do a lot better than chance when out in the field. This would be a pretty expensive way to test whether something is mere superstition or not.

My tendency is to think that dowsers in the field find water because it was there anyway owing to it's abundance - but until we properly test that we won't know. The old bloke who divined the bore on the place I used to live as a kid was correct in ways that seemed to suggest something more than chance - he was right within inches as to the depth, he was roughly correct as to the amount that could be extracted and he was spot on as to the quality (hopeless for much - so mineralized it just kept corroding out all tap and other plumbing fittings and the bore was abandoned as soon as a dam was dug. I remember that your hair would stand on end after washing it and when dry, would shower "mineral dandruff" ).

It helps when you live over the Great Artesian Basin.

I've often seen them used on the Anakie field - pretty impossible to know whether anything is actually happening or not. I've seen dowsers successfully find artesian water - but since water is one of the most abundant substances in the earth's crust, was it simply that the water was there anyway?

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Many buildings in the UK are hundreds of years old and a lot of the water supply's will come through piping that was laid down without a care in the world from private water supply's/springs. So fast forward to today's world and theses pipes have to be found for what ever reason. Short of hiring some ground penetrating radar there is not a lot of choice but to choose guess or use divining rods.
Personally I was/am very skeptical of it. But I was involved on a job where the water board were laying down mains supply over a 17km stretch and connecting all the houses onto the new mains. Of coarse they had to find the old existing piping in all cases. So they were out with the divining rods, finding these old pipes. And having very reasonable success. It definitely gave it some credibility as they were not looking for abundant or not ground water but water flowing through pipe work.

Heatho said:

It helps when you live over the Great Artesian Basin.

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Exactly

To be fair, it still isn't everywhere underneath there either. But still, the greatest likelyhood seems to me that it's abundant enough for there to be a fairly high rate of success even if you were randomly drilling holes. Of course, without comprehensive (and extremely expensive) testing, we'll never know.

I reckon there's a good chance of enough water for a bore down at the back corner of my block. The reason is that the area is a broad, flat drainage channel down between two rows of hills - a tiny valley of sorts - that becomes a seasonal swamp over summer. Seems like a good bet to me and I think anyone with a pair of rods would head straight to that spot because the topography says it's likely, not the rods. Of course, it's always possible that despite these factors, there is in fact not sufficient artesian water to bother sinking a bore. I'll never know because just like extensive field tests, it's way too expensive. I have a reliable source of water anyway.

Mr Magoo said:

I've often seen them used on the Anakie field - pretty impossible to know whether anything is actually happening or not. I've seen dowsers successfully find artesian water - but since water is one of the most abundant substances in the earth's crust, was it simply that the water was there anyway?

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Many buildings in the UK are hundreds of years old and a lot of the water supply's will come through piping that was laid down without a care in the world from private water supply's/springs. So fast forward to today's world and theses pipes have to be found for what ever reason. Short of hiring some ground penetrating radar there is not a lot of choice but to choose guess or use divining rods.
Personally I was/am very skeptical of it. But I was involved on a job where the water board were laying down mains supply over a 17km stretch and connecting all the houses onto the new mains. Of coarse they had to find the old existing piping in all cases. So they were out with the divining rods, finding these old pipes. And having very reasonable success. It definitely gave it some credibility as they were not looking for abundant or not ground water but water flowing through pipe work.

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Well I had only heard of people looking for artesian water with rods being reasonably successful, but there you go.

This is why it's hard for me to decide......there's no scientific explanation as to how or why something like this should work but they seem to succeed much more often than chance would dictate.

Even though I have seen the results I'm also still skeptical. But what ever works I guess.

Mr Magoo said:

Even though I have seen the results I'm also still skeptical. But what ever works I guess.

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Yep.

Though why it at least appears to often work in the field is the question that interests me. How anyone with a bent bit of wire can not only find underground water but do so consistently much more often than what you would expect chance to dictate is a bit of a puzzle.

Despite it's high field success rate, it has so little credibility among scientific researchers that it doesn't seem any (that I'm aware of) have bothered to actually put these people to the test where it really matters, out in the field. To be fair, as mentioned previously it would be an very expensive exercise and who is going to give a research grant to test such an old superstition, especially when they can't perform in controlled environment testing?

I'm still skeptical and leaning towards it being easily found because it's under the ground all over the place anyway. But until solid testing proves beyond doubt that this is the reason for their high rate of field success, I remain curious as to what might actually be happening. It took us a long time to understand things like magnetism and electricity just because we didn't have the technology to see and examine them with at the time.

I must admit I am skeptical of such claims.

"The Munich dowsing experiments represent the most extensive test ever conducted of the hypothesis that a genuine mysterious ability permits dowsers to detect hidden water sources. The research was conducted in a sympathetic atmosphere, on a highly selected group of candidates, with careful control of many relevant variables. The researchers themselves concluded that the outcome unquestionably demonstrated successful dowsing abilities, but a thoughtful re-examination of the data indicates that such an interpretation can only be regarded as the result of wishful thinking. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a set of experimental results that would represent a more persuasive disproof of the ability of dowsers to do what they claim. The experiments thus can and should be considered a decisive failure by the dowsers."

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/testing_dowsing_the_failure_of_the_munich_experiments

When it comes to gold and gems, why bother with a $10,000 metal detector when a couple of bits of wire would do?

Where are the millionaire dowsers with fancy homes, trophy wives and a garage full of flash cars?

Here is a Trailer of a Video a few Mates produced(a bit lame, I know ).. Gemseek Adventures New England... there is a bit showing Andrew from Aussie Sapphires using his Divining Rods... Aussie Sapphires found All their Sapphires using this Method... Believe it or not, once you See this in action, you will become a bit Less Sceptic....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMHXtpJNfKE

And here is a Topic on the Subject... A bit of Reading...

http://aussielapidaryforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=498.0

LW....

When it comes to gold and gems, why bother with a $10,000 metal detector when a couple of bits of wire would do?
Where are the millionaire dowsers with fancy homes, trophy wives and a garage full of flash cars?

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Best point yet

I'm not sure of the final conclusions made by all parties commenting on the Munich experiment though - the researchers who conducted the experiment appear to believe there seems to be an element of something real in it while the society of sceptics believe that the researchers are guilty of sloppy scientific work, accusing the researchers of making a relatively feeble defence against the skeptic society's criticism (though they do not spell it out there and then) and....

Because of the vigor, however, with which Professor Betz and colleagues defended their positive conclusions (Betz et al. 1996), and in view of the discouraging history of other claims about the occult, one may have residual doubts, as do I, about whether reason will prevail in this arena (Enright 1996).

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This still leaves me uncertain - the scientists who conducted the study think there's something in it while the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry believe the researchers did not understand how to interpret their own findings.

Jeez, I don't know if we could regard either party as being truly objective here. The researchers may have taken on the project because they wanted to believe that there's something real to be discovered and ultimately explained scientifically, which could possibly have skewed their conclusions. Likewise, the formal skeptics societies don't really seem all that different to a religion to me - they already know the ultimate truth of any matter they care to comment on and I can't see any amount of evidence - even scientifically evaluated - convincing such people.

In the meantime, dowsers seem to keep on finding water fairly successfully, either by simple luck or something else. Of course, if artesian water is that common then the chance of it being there is so high that they aren't really scoring above chance at all.

To be fair to those dowsing for gems, none of the ones I've accompanied have actually claimed to be able to locate the individual stones themselves, only mineralized ground.

Yeah No...it's not the rods, or wands, or whatever that they hold in their hands - it is the person themselves who pick up the hint that what they're after is down there.

They could have anything in their hands and it would react if they walked over it, I reckon.

We all know of someone who's called a 'tinarse', or known as 'tinny', who gets the most finds no matter where or what they're looking for - we call 'em lucky, don't we - when we all know that luck is when opportunity and preparation meet, and the majority of the time there is no preparation involved, instead, they'll say something like 'this looks good - let's have a try', and sure as eggs are eggs, Mr Tinarse cracks it. Everytime.

Funny eh...

Mungoman said:

Yeah No...it's not the rods, or wands, or whatever that they hold in their hands - it is the person themselves who pick up the hint that what they're after is down there.

They could have anything in their hands and it would react if they walked over it, I reckon.

We all know of someone who's called a 'tinarse', or known as 'tinny', who gets the most finds no matter where or what they're looking for - we call 'em lucky, don't we - when we all know that luck is when opportunity and preparation meet, and the majority of the time there is no preparation involved, instead, they'll say something like 'this looks good - let's have a try', and sure as eggs are eggs, Mr Tinarse cracks it. Everytime.

Funny eh...

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I reckon ktmman's brother must have an amethyst crystal in his brain

I would agree on that Lefty :Y:

ktmman said:

I would agree on that Lefty :Y:

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He's just too lucky for it to be simple good luck I reckon