WorldWide Drilling Resource

Reader’s Response WWDR welcomes comments... Hello Harold, I enjoy reading your column in WWDR as I can easily relate to it. Many years ago as an owner of a water well drilling company in New England, I had many episodes with dowsers. They were a colorful lot with varied methods of implementations. One Mr. Dew, whom I began to use exclusively, was a real gentleman in every sense of the word and only charged $5.00 as he traveled 30-50 miles in his own car and was 100% effective. In one instance, I had drilled approx- imately 40 wells in a shade-grown tobac- co area and was contracted to drill a large irrigation well a few miles outside the area. On a map, I plotted the wells and connected them with red lines to signify the different aquifers. Owning my own aircraft, I sat Mr. Dew in the rear seat with his magic stick and overflew the area. Uncannily from a height of approximately 2000 feet, every time I overflew a red aquifer line on my map Mr. Dew’s "magic stick" would activate and dip up and down vigorously. Mr. Dew had no idea what I was doing or even realized I had lines on a map. After crisscrossing one red line, I kept flying toward the area that required a well, but far outside the marked area, and finally bracketed a well site. We eventually drilled a large successful irriga- tion well at this spot selected from the air. Moving forward several years and as a firm believer (no stick or wires), but with hundreds of successful outcomes using the "feeling?", I was in South Yemen as a contracted water consultant and was asked to travel to a northern area one weekend to suggest a location for a well on property owned by a high- ranking dignitary. With three cars full of locals, we traveled several hours and arrived (alive!) at the location, a barren lava sand desert with mountains in the distance, small scrub bushes, and no building for as far as the eye could see in any direction. I separated from the group and did a "walk about" for about an hour and then piled up a bunch of stones to mark the spot selected, then called over the group of local Yemens, who immediately went berserk yelling, jumping up and down, laughing, and waving their arms. I had no idea what the heck was going on. Then they beckoned for me to follow them about 30-40 feet away and they started kicking and digging the loose dirt with their hands, uncover- ing a piece of six-foot square plywood. They lifted it up, exposing a big round metal marker painted red with Chinese or Japanese writing on it. Then my "sort of” interpreter ex- plained that the year before, the prop- erty owner had hired a Japanese firm which came with many people, sophis- ticated instrumentation, and spent a total of 90 days selecting the well loca- tion and implanting the red marker. Go figure. Did they drill and find a great well? I have no idea. I was just glad to sur- vive the ride back to the Ramada-Hada Hotel with thoughts I had been there long enough! Archie Lennon Stockdale Mine Supply, LLC Norwich, Ohio 65 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® MAY 2015 $ ( *!& () ' %!$. +& / & +)*(. +$. .(*$ '&, &*!'& &* ( .(*$ '+* ('$!& '( %'( !& '(% *!'& !, +) $$ '( ,!)!* +) '&$!& --- "+ !$ - * () '- '% '+ & $)' '$$'- +) '& ''#