If you are planning on adding a shelf or some other wall mounted piece which you want to be sturdy, then you know that blindly drilling holes into the wall is not going to give you the support you need. Finding a stud is what will give you the anchoring you need to put some serious weight on the wall. But without a stud finder that can be an issue. We will cover some pointers to finding a stud in a wall without a studfinder.

The first thing you will want to look for is ny indication of nails in the wall even though they should be covered over well. Any indentations or raised areas like this would tell you that the nails or screws is what is holding the drywall onto the stud.

If that doesn’t work then run your hand across the wall to look for any seams. This will also give you an indication of where 2 pieces of drywall come together which in most cases is straight to the middle of a stud as well.

If that isn’t working for you then you can go with the old knocking method. While this does not work well with thick walls, you can give it a shot on your walls and see if you notice a difference in sound when you hit a stud. When you go over the stud the knock should be slightly higher pitched than just hollow wall.

Hopefully this will help you find a stud, and if not then you may want to grab a flashlight in a last attempt to find any uneveness in the wall. If this doesn’t work then you may have to take a shot at where you think it is by drilling into the wall. If you miss the stud and hit hollow then you can stick a bent wire in through the hole and to the side of the wall until you hit the stud. once this happens just wiggle the wire until you find the point in the wall that your stud is located.

If all else fails and all of these methods have just not done it for you then you definitely just need to buy a stud finder.