"The idea of doing this is right up there with the licking your fingers and touching the wires to see if they're hot trick."
Saw a carpenter do that when I told him to wait for me to demo an area... (he didn't want to wait) I looked over as he started pulling out switches on his own. "What the %^&* are you doing, those are still live!" I say. So the dope does just that, licks, and puts his fingers across the switch. (No load) "No they aint..." (Sometimes you just want to smack people!!!!) I was temped to stick a bulb back in the fixture and tell him to try it again....
Anyway, I saw some jerk short a circuit to find it once, and it didn't pop the CB open, it welded the conductors together, and melted most of the circuit before it eventually popped. You don't have to find a breaker if you have the opprotunity to rewire it completely....
