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Cheaper than a shiner
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20 Replies
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Back in the ’90s the place I worked for used concrete nails instead of PKs because PKs were too expensive. I would drive them through pennies just like that. The boss complained about the cost! I assured him that the pennies were coming out of my pocket, not his. He figured he must be paying me too much.
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Pennies cost a little over $0.02 to mint…and a nickel costs about $0.08 to mint. So Using a penny you get a pretty good subsidy when you use it for something else. Just a thought.
—Dan MacIsaac, PLS -
And pennies get “shinier” the more they get run over. We also used concrete nails, before I had ever heard of a Magnail.
Andy
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I’ve never seen that before!!
Thanks for posting!!
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The kind of shiners I use cost about $1ea. ????
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And pennies get “shinier” the more they get run over.
Modern pennies are mostly zinc with only a thin veneer of copper that will wear away quickly. Older pennies of mostly copper are getting rare in the wild because they have about $0.03 worth of copper in them, melt value.
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Yeah, but 50 years ago I don’t believe we were too worried about the melt value.
Andy
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Way back, we used to use the caps from be…soda. Probably much more expensive than just using a penny, but they were a lot more fun to get! For some reason, that was one stock item that never seemed to run low.
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I came here looking for an inexpensive way to avoid a black eye.
I am disappointed…
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Copenhagen lids and beer coke soda bottle lids is what we use to use. I had a cousin way older than I he was electrician so he use to bring me the circle punch outs in a old paint bucket. I would use a press drill and punch a small hole in center and stored them in the truck. But that was in 90??s.
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“Nail w/Bottle Cap” are quite common reference points for ties around here. I always use Shiner caps…pun intended, and Shiner Bock is my favorite brew.
https://shiner.com/brewery/spoetzl-brewery
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One now-deceased, local surveyor used bottle caps regularly with his reference nails. The nails were cheap as they were so small
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Way back, we used to use the caps from be…soda. Probably much more expensive than just using a penny, but they were a lot more fun to get! For some reason, that was one stock item that never seemed to run low.
This was also quite common when retracing old Trans Canada Pipeline surveys. You would find the traverse control points called out:
#1 “BLUE”
#2 “OV”
#3 “L50”
#4 “BUD”
It also seems like 1/5 of the vertical benchmarks set in the 60’s in Toronto were, rather conveniently, always set into the foundation of a Beer Store.
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@mightymoe First time for me too
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Modern pennies are mostly zinc with only a thin veneer of copper that will wear away quickly.
Unless there’s abrasive exposure (think tires or shoe soles), I think the copper will stick around for a long time. And the zinc itself, while not mechanically very strong, is pretty corrosion-resistant — it’s what they use for galvanizing steel.
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The cost of markers is negligible compared with the cost of survey, unless you are undercharging!
For anything which needs to remain for the long term I use either crosshead 6mm. machine screws drilled into concrete or coach bolt and washer into tarmac. Grade A2 in most cases, but grade A4 in hostile environments. Warning – if you want to punchmark A4 then you need to get a centre punch turned up from machine tool steel – nothing else will make an impression on A4.
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This was found in a CLCL. I thought it was interesting since I had never seen a penny used. It will probably just be paved over in a few years.
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I use either crosshead 6mm. machine screws drilled into concrete or coach bolt and washer into tarmac.
I had to look up the term “coach bolt”. I thought others might need to as well. I wouldn’t like to leave a hex head bolt sticking out of a sidewalk – trip hazard. In the curb might be okay.
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In the curb might be okay.
I need to take a picture of a pin near my place and post it here. Someone actually drilled a pin into the rounded part near the face of the curb and then apparently tried to stick a cap on it. It must have looked totally ridiculous because they then apparently took a saws-all and shaved off the part of the cap that stuck out. So now there’s a plastic donut around the bar that sort of fits the shape of the curb. ????????
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Our coach bolts are the round headed type – probably only about 3mm. above the surface.
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