I'm going over some US Deputy Surveyors field notes from February 1833, and I'm wondering just how they pounded their oak stakes into the frozen ground during the winters.
My guess is that they did it with a heavy maul and a lot of effort.
Anyone actually done this, or seen it done?
Would they have used what we call a Gad? Hardened metal spike 3 feet long with point.
I imagine it's no different, apart from the cold, to driving stakes into hard gravel for setout.
Still remember years ago I employed a bloke to setout roads.
Sent him off on his first day.
Poor bloke. Ist job was offsets in a gravel pull off bay about 200 metres long.
Took him all day to drive them using a heavy sledge hammer and gad. It was mid summer with appropriate temperature.
Initiation at its worst.
Had to be 'pre-bored' with a gad or similar tool if it was truly froze, or in many areas the prairie grass and snow kept the ground from freezing as it often does today. I am sure some less than reputable contract surveyors didn't get much penetration or much of a mound around them during the winter as well. Not much different from today in some ways.
I am going from memory of the instructions for around here, but I always figured they drove the stake in +/-6-12" then mounded 18 to 24" of dirt around it.
Steve
I'm going to guess that if they actually set a "stake and mound", they chopped a slot in the ground with an axe, tapped the stake in, and then chopped a few chunks of sod with the axe and spade to pile against the stake. Never mind official dimensions. Probably one axe for wood and one for sod.
wfwenzel, post: 404888, member: 7180 wrote: I'm going over some US Deputy Surveyors field notes from February 1833, and I'm wondering just how they pounded their oak stakes into the frozen ground during the winters.
My guess is that they did it with a heavy maul and a lot of effort.
Anyone actually done this, or seen it done?
Where were they? Her in Northern Michigan the ground is never frozen in February. A couple feet of snow insulates the ground and it thaws back out. If we get early snow, some years it never freezes. Now the road, that's another matter!!!
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We use to keep a bundle of 1" oak hubs in the truck for tough spots. Most of the time we use SYP hubs that are NOT that tough. Those oak 'spikes' were pretty darned tough.
Southern Wisconsin.
Instructions were that they were to drive the stake in 2 feet. They did in the summer I've found the bottoms of them.
I drove a 3/4" iron rebar in the driveway yesterday. I drilled a hole about 7 inches deep until I ran out of battery, a mistake I'll not make again. Once the rod is whacked in more than a few inches past the hole, you're not getting it out again, so the only thing to do is pound it in. It must have taken 200 belts with the 10 pound maul to get it past the frozen gravel base. The last few inches were the "easiest".
They had to pound the green oak stakes in farther than a few inches, otherwise they'd have fallen out in the spring.
NO one gets 18" of dirt here in the winter.
wfwenzel, post: 404934, member: 7180 wrote: Southern Wisconsin.
Instructions were that they were to drive the stake in 2 feet. They did in the summer I've found the bottoms of them.
I drove a 3/4" iron rebar in the driveway yesterday. I drilled a hole about 7 inches deep until I ran out of battery, a mistake I'll not make again. Once the rod is whacked in more than a few inches past the hole, you're not getting it out again, so the only thing to do is pound it in. It must have taken 200 belts with the 10 pound maul to get it past the frozen gravel base. The last few inches were the "easiest".
They had to pound the green oak stakes in farther than a few inches, otherwise they'd have fallen out in the spring.
NO one gets 18" of dirt here in the winter.
Frozen over a foot here, they are already ice fishing, might be a loooong winter 🙁
This reminds me of the reason I left Wisconsin. My mentor and all around clever guy Ralph Anderson used to carry a rubber tube, the kind the repair shops hook onto your tail pipe in the winter. When he had determined the spot to dig, he would park the Travelall in the vicinity and we would have lunch while the ground was unfreezing. Setting was another thing. We had what he called a frost pin (about 1 1/2" dia solid steel with a pointed end) and a 16 lb maul. Ralph never missed.
Richard, post: 404899, member: 833 wrote: Would they have used what we call a Gad?
We call that a Bull Prick...
Mike Mac, post: 404950, member: 2901 wrote: We call that a Bull Prick...
Also known as a frost pin. Except here in California, because we don't know what the word "frost" means.
Field Notes I'm looking at...T18N R15W MDM...Deputy says he did it in a couple of weeks in December 1882. That is the wet season in coastal Mendocino County, especially back then. Some of his topo calls make sense, others not so much. I'm thinking maybe there was so much water in the gulches that maybe he mistook a gulch for a creek? In another spot he says the gulch runs up a steep hillside, same bearing. It's like if they didn't know they just said it flowed S 38å¡ W because I've seen that in a few places.
Frost pin, gad, bull-point, all the same thing. Whack it in a foot plus, bang it around, pull it out, then pound the hub in.
TDD ?
Yeah, I liberated a 4 foot curb pin from the concrete guys, and I use that. At 4', you don't need to bend over to drive it. Goes into the lath bag; the somewhat sharp point nullified by turning the bag inside out and gluing leather to it in a cup shape - lasts forever.
Frozen ground is a bugger. It's not actually brittle so it can be drilled. Stone or concrete is easier to drill. Frozen ground thaws around the bit and then the clay soil bogs the drill down the deeper you go. It's like a very stiff jell. Doesn't chip all that well, either, so spud bars don't work too easy.
I never pounded a green, white oak sharpened stake into frozen ground (hence the post, which is easier!), but I'm sure it's tough. The US guys had to carry whatever they used, frost pin, maul, and ax, so weight was a factor.
I do it all the time. I use a gad. It sucks. I try to keep some of the shorter hubs available for this. I've also found a large 36" double head tent stake works well if you don't feel like bending down as much.
Horses and mules would have carried the heavy stuff.
Theoretically they might have bon-fired the area first. A couple of hours of that would likely thaw it out some. Plus the added benefit of a charcoal pit. Sit around the fire and have a little whiskey to take the chill off too!
My dad told me when they had to dig up a pin in the 50's, they would put an old tire over it, and set it on fire. Come back in two hours, ground would be nice and soft. Can't imagination any problems doing that nowadays...
Dan Patterson, post: 405041, member: 1179 wrote: I've also found a large 36" double head tent stake works well if you don't feel like bending down as much.
I looked at that link and thought that those stakes looked pretty cool. I even got as far as checking the shipping cost, then realized that I don't have any legitimate use for one, so I made myself navigate away from the site.