I had to respond to this one.  Like Andy, I was always skeptical of
such tomfoolery.  Then, in 1980 I went to work for a wholesale plant
nursery way out in the rural areas of Oglethorpe County, Georgia.  My
job was partly the maintenance of above- (and below-) ground irrigation
systems.  It was not uncommon to have to dig up pipes which had been
set four to six feet below ground many years earlier.

One day, there was a local farmer/blacksmith present while we studied
an old map trying to pinpoint the position of a buried pipeline.  This
fellow offered to show me how to dowse for it.  I was incredulous that
an educated man would believe in such things, but said, sure, why not.

So he retrieved from his truck a pair of welding rods, bent in the
L-shape as Andy described, and held them likewise and began to walk
slowly back and forth across the area we were searching.  Nothing
happened, and he scratched his head and said our map had to be wrong,
as there was no water down there.

We exchanged glances saying silently what we already figured, this
guy's trick just wouldn't work.  But, he persisted and began to widen
the search area for a few minutes.  Suddenly, about 40 feet from where
our map said the line should be, the rods began to move of their own
accord, into a parallel orientation.

At first I thought he was somehow making this happen.  So I tried it.
Sure enough, some unseen force took control of the rods at the same
spot each time, no matter which way you walked across the spot, and
would return to their forward pointing angle after crossing over the
particular spot, so you could really pinpoint a precise place to dig.

Each of us gave it a try, and the rods responded consistently every
time.  We had a crew start digging and in a few minutes we had our 8-
inch PVC pipeline uncovered, 6 feet down and 40 feet away from where
the original map showed it to be.

Made a believer out of me.  The fellow looked at us and his eyes
said it all:  "Don't you college-educated fellers go thinkin' you know
everything just yet!"

I have since seen this repeated at least a half dozen times, each time
with pinpoint accuracy and success in finding water in underground
streams or rivers, or buried water pipes.  It works, folks!

Reg Smith
Athens, GA