Sweet, that's kinds like "sorta pregnant," or "found original marked stone on farmers mantle."
@loyal So it's like a reference monument saying "you're close!" to the real thing....
Someone is a terrific measurer.
More likely the exact opposite. I remember hearing a speaker say in an error propagation seminar decades ago "365.08' is a number, 365.08', +/- 0.03', with a two-sigma repeatability is a measurement."
@steinhoff
Okay, I was getting a little nostalgic for my days sailing over the bounding main.
Historic boundaries and conservation efforts.
No idea what that is either.
In my world a "shiner" is a round piece of tin plate about and inch and a half in diameter that is typically set together with a mag nail.
Those things that Rover83 linked are "washers". A similar, but distinctly different, thing - to me.
Oh I've seen these things before though they seem fairly uncommon around here. These things and the skinny metal "price tag" looking things seem so flimsy I'm a little surprised they were ever heavily used.
When I have found them they were usually accessories to section corners. I could see how they help draw attention to a nail in a post, but like I say they don't seem durable enough to last very long. When I do CP&Fs I prefer describing the face of the pole the nail is on and listing a distance above the adjacent grade to the nail-- those things have always helped me find nails better than shiners, tags, etc.
Hey Boss, we found that stone you wanted us to look for. It's in the back of the truck; where do you want it?
There's a story of a survey crew trying to locate sections on a reservation. They were having trouble finding anything. The PC was chatting with a local who told he knew where all the monuments were located. So the PC got excited and asked the local to show him one. The local said I'll do better than that and take you to more than one. So they got into their trucks and headed out, finally descending into a steep valley where the PC knew no section corners could have been placed. They got out near a creek and the local pointed to a pile of rocks, each one marked as a section or 1/4 corner. They were marked but never set.
They were marked but never set.
No time like the present!
So, this is about 500' north of his survey; it's an original plat monument for the plat north and west of his survey. If you were that confident that your measurements were that precise; wouldn't you just add your dimple; helping out the next poor soul that needed to deal with such a travesty?
Oh well, C'est La Vie...
If he adjusted by a process that generates a linear error of closure the any reference on a monument less then the linear error of closure is a guess. If the adjustment process generates error ellipses there are any number of settings one can fiddle with to get a wonderful but meaningless adjustment.
Northern California: shiner
Southern California: tin
San Bernardino: flasher (not kidding, pages and pages of field notes referencing flashers kind of makes me chuckle). RPs in trees and utility poles.
Coincidentally, about an hour ago I was watching an ancient episode of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One guest was Richard Kline, possibly best known for playing John Ritter's buddy, Larry, on Three's Company. He told the story of his first acting job after returning from his Army days in Vietnam. It was at the Lincoln Center in New York City. A very avant garde play where his name was simply, Man Who Comes From The River. The final scene required him to come up through a trap door while being hidden from view by billowing sheets of blue material that is being moved rhythmically by two mimes. As the blue material was lowered around him, he appeared in a loin cloth that had just been doused with cold water by a hidden stage hand. The play then called for him to remove the loin cloth and wring it out before walking away. Full frontal nudity in front of 1100 people per show with cold water adding to the lack of a standing ovation.