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Williams, Nicholas – The permanent magnetization of ferromagnetic cutlery by paranormal bending
Identifier
026932
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
THE METAL-BENDERS” by PROFESSOR JOHN B. HASTED
The permanent magnetization of ferromagnetic cutlery by paranormal bending can be investigated with the minimum of equipment. Much stainless steel cutlery in the home is weakly magnetised, due to normal causes such as the earth’s magnetic field, local electric currents, children’s magnets, etc.; perhaps some of it is magnetic when it leaves the factory. The usual configuration is with one pole on the handle, and one pole at a prong of a fork or on the bowl of a spoon. With a miniature compass one may with practice readily find the approximate positions of these poles, making certain by careful search that there are no subsidiary poles.
But when a curled bend or tight twist is produced paranormally (as for example in the Nicholas Williams cutlery bent during his first latchkey strain gauge run), subsidiary poles are usually found close to the bend, as follows:
Handle tip Either side of curled bend Prongs
N SN S
Subsidiary poles can be produced normally by the following techniques:
1 fracture;
2 heating the centre of the neck to above the Curie point;
3 prolonged hammering of the centre of the neck;
4 demagnetization followed by re-magnetization in a different way.
But as yet I have been unable to produce subsidiary poles merely by physical bending of the centre of the neck. It appears that some structural change has been brought about in the Nicholas Williams cutlery (and also in some of Stephen North’s and Mark Henry’s) by a mechanism we do not understand.
I would not claim complete confidence about such findings, and they may well turn out to be of doubtful validity; but the simplicity of the equipment necessary to make the observations surely makes them valuable to researchers. It is also an amusing family game. Normal household cutlery can also be magnetised NSN, SNS or in more complicated ways. The effects of paranormal bending on these pieces might be complicated, so that they should be avoided when conducting household experiments on metal-bending.