DND ASE pin / stake found

[Robin Craig]

Good day,

I came across this the other day and saved it for two reasons, firstly it is all aluminum or aluminium depending on which side of the pond or hemisphere you are from, second because of the stamped markings.

It is about 30" long and the rectangular block on the top is 1 1/2" by 3".

I have no clue as to what other meanings the initials DND could refer to.

It looks like a survey pin as I would call it.

It was found in a barn, so yes a barn find.

Anyone shed any light?

[Mike Cecil]

Hi Robin,

I agree with you: looks very much like a surveyor's Permanent Mark post to me, driven into the ground with only the very top of the pin showing. I'm sure we have some surveyors among the MLU fraternity that would have experience of PMs and could provide more meaningful comment than mine.

I wonder if the block is to stamp data on such as a reference number of the location where it is used?

Mike

[maple_leaf_eh]

Army Survey Establishment existed from 1946 to 1966. That pin is not a permanent marker. The ones I'm familiar with are brass, and have more detail stamped on the visible surface. It wouldn't be a cadastral marker but a topographic one. The survey rigour is as strong, but different between the two disciplines.

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Originally Posted by maple_leaf_eh

Army Survey Establishment existed from 1946 to 1966. That pin is not a permanent marker. The ones I'm familiar with are brass, and have more detail stamped on the visible surface. It wouldn't be a cadastral marker but a topographic one. The survey rigour is as strong, but different between the two disciplines.

Can you explain a little further what you mean by a 'topographical' marker?

I think you may have a few members out there scratching their heads over the term 'cadastral' but it's just a fancy way of saying land parcel or lot boundaries. Most cadastal and even control survey monuments are steel with brass or bronze identification caps. I've never seen aluminum and wonder how well they would stand up being pounded into the ground. That, plus the ablilty to locate them with a typical survey 'bar finder' (or in the old days a 'dip meter') which operates on an iron/magnetic principle.

[maple_leaf_eh]

Originally Posted by Bruce Parker

Can you explain a little further what you mean by a 'topographical' marker?

I think you may have a few members out there scratching their heads over the term 'cadastral' but it's just a fancy way of saying land parcel or lot boundaries. Most cadastal and even control survey monuments are steel with brass or bronze identification caps. I've never seen aluminum and wonder how well they would stand up being pounded into the ground. That, plus the ablilty to locate them with a typical survey 'bar finder' (or in the old days a 'dip meter') which operates on an iron/magnetic principle.

I try to stretch my vocabulary within the bounds of common speech. Scientists have their terminology, as do vehicle restorers.

Anything aluminum would be there as weatherproof, but as you say not be a permanent legal marker. Ferrous metal, ie "iron bars" of old, are the preferred enduring way to indicate agreed points. The two houses I've owned have had 3/4" steel bars somewhere at the extremities of the property lines.

Topographic survey is for maps. Draw big areas without necessarily worrying about the smaller parcels. I subscribe to an online magazine called, American Surveyor, and some of the tale the professionals tell are wild. One fellow wrote about having to prove the boundaries of a particular property north of San Francisco so an estate could be settled (http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmer...1_Vol9No10.pdf and http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmer...2_Vol10No1.pdf). The same sorts of problems arise with larger administrative boundaries. Military surveyors were called in to 'collect' the boundary between the three warring entities immediately after the Dayton Peace Accords for the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Imagine tiptoeing, bold as a canal horse through the no-man's land of a civil war? The so-called Inter Entity boundary line is now the defacto border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republika Srpska (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-..._Boundary_Line). I knew surveyors who were on that job.

The business of borders gets interesting in other parts of the world. Based on which definition of the shape of the world a country chooses, some interesting occurrences arise. Pakistan has a sea level coast. It uses an Earth-centred geodetic datum. Afghanistan is landlocked. They use a surface point of origin for their maps. Mathematically both are acceptable places to start, except a measurement that begins at the centre of the Earth has fewer human induced errors, and is more widely accepted internationally. There are places on the AF/Pak border where each claims territory inside each other's boundaries. In some cases by hundreds of metres. It doesn't help that the science of this mathematical discipline is frightfully complicated, with propagation of error of tenth and twelfth decimal places equalling the magnitude of difference of shooting distances on the surface. And the world is not uniformly uneven either, not is the sea level! Fortunately, every country has a few distinguished academics who worry about borders more than the rest of us, and there are international conventions of settling boundary disputes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_dispute).

[Robin Craig]

So, great infor there Terry as ever.

Where were these kinds of bars used then in this area and why would it be here on my island?

[maple_leaf_eh]

I'll have to ask one of the old-time surveyors about aluminum pins. My mind goes towards a year-by-year marker when a job is close to being finished, but needs to be revisited next survey season. For some reason your pin was not retrieved when the job was completed, or the survey parties had worked their way across to the edge of the next map sheet and had no compelling reason to go all the way back for a written-off marker.

Your island should have been collected in one season by a party of three, four, five surveyors. A party chief, an instrument man and any number of fore and backsight men. The more observations the party can take, the quicker things go but a lot depends on what else is happening in other survey programs.

I have a wartime Canadian map sheet in the unit's collection that has a genuine "there be dragons" data void. It is in southwest Ontario in the diagonally settled agricultural ranges and concessions. Almost all of the sheet is complete with the expected level of detail for buildings, roads, bridges and woodlines. Except on one edge there is a stretch where the surveyor collected what he could see from the road, as would have been the extent of his practical limits, very likely using plane table survey. What he couldn't see he didn't draw, leaving along the edge of the sheet a scalloped wave of white paper! Whoever had the job to edge-match the two adjoining sheets either didn't have any more detail or couldn't extrapolate to fill in the void.

[Robert Bergeron]

Fascinating depiction Terry.

I have walked past every day numerous ( at least 12 ) British land markers similar to these but made of steel all over CFB Esquimalt in the past year.

Some people took their land surveying seriously in those days..

[maple_leaf_eh]

I asked two different military surveyors about aluminum survey pins.

The Cpl spoke from his experience on airfield survey jobs where the party's task was to accurately locate the centreline of semi-improved strips on military bases. The RCAF has a huge long checklist of quals for its tactical airlift pilots. One of them is to land and takeoff a C130 from a grass strip. To that end several bases have approved strips which are coincidentally exactly parallel with existing hard surface strips. There is one at Camp Wainwright for example. I flew into that one for (oh brother does this sound old!) for RV89.

The grubby military surveyor's job is therefore to locate both ends of a centreline to millimeter accuracy, so the bluejob with zippers everywhere can skid his shiny air-e-o-plane onto a GPS track in the mowed grass. Three checks in the box for his quals and a logbook entry for the record. Because grass strips are unimproved, the task only needed two markers that could be easily found again, wouldn't really matter if they got mowed over, or gradered out.

Despite the prevalence of good airfields all around the world, there are times when putting a C130 into an impossibly tight spot is necessary. Goofle search for JACMEL, HAITI. There is a grass strip there where the palm trees have encroached so much, the CF Herc' had to land sideways after the 2010 earthquake. JACMEL is also the hometown of Her Excellency the Governor General Michaelle Jean. Someone had to prove a point. (Your humble scribe was asked urgently by the Airfield Engineers at Air Force HQ, where is the nearest gravel pit so they could fill a few holes. Northwest and upstream about 3km, we see a borrow pit on the Haitian's own map sheet. Good luck Gravel Tech!)

The Warrant Officer for the Survey Troop had a similar response to his Cpl. An aluminum pin would be a temporary survey station, rather than a brass or iron pin to mark a permanent station. If the point needed to be revisited, the instrument man could find the pin and set his instrument exactly over top. Then he could resume a previously suspended job and take it to completion. Aluminum pins are expendable, but for a few months or a couple of years, they are intended to be used again. If left behind, shrug, no a big deal.

[maple_leaf_eh]

Originally Posted by Bruce Parker

Can you explain a little further what you mean by a 'topographical' marker?

I think you may have a few members out there scratching their heads over the term 'cadastral' but it's just a fancy way of saying land parcel or lot boundaries. Most cadastal and even control survey monuments are steel with brass or bronze identification caps. I've never seen aluminum and wonder how well they would stand up being pounded into the ground. That, plus the ablilty to locate them with a typical survey 'bar finder' (or in the old days a 'dip meter') which operates on an iron/magnetic principle.

In my research, both surveyors commented on how difficult it is to sink a 2' aluminum bar into the dirt. The end tends to mushroom when pounded with a steel hammer. Rubber mallets work, but slowly. One thing mentioned was a steel cap that slides over the head of the pin so a conventional 5-lb sledge can be used.