Jim Frame, post: 423665, member: 10 wrote: I went looking for photos of a buttonhead tent stakes, either new or vintage, thinking they'd be easy to find, but so far I've come up empty. Now I'm wondering if the surplus tent stake story I've believed all these years is legit. In addition to the term buttonhead, I've also seen them described as "iron pipe with driving head," but so far no photos of a production item under that moniker, either.
More research would seem to be in order.
It does look like the tent stakes that one would see at carnivals and fairs that had large tents.
I would imagine that after WW2 that there would have been a large surplus supply.
Would be tempted to think the rebar wa set by a surveyor and the other was set by a land owner as a guard stake. Call for corner monument type, size, etc found at a goofy looking guard stake
Jim Frame, post: 423657, member: 10 wrote: That's a tent stake, but around here they're called buttonheads. After WWII one of the local surveying/engineering shops bought pallets of them, and they're everywhere in the county. The design varies some, but they're typically a 1" diameter by 36" long pipe with a solid top welded on. I think the bottom end is welded closed into a point, but it's been many years since I've pulled one up.
Sounds about right to me, it was found in Sacramento County near Fruitridge Elementary. I believe the thing is hollow though which lends to it maybe not being able to take too many big hits with a hammer (McMillan's links showed solid forged bars) as one might expect from a tent stake.
I may pull it carefully like Nate said and investigate further then reset in original position.
2 1/2 inch knob welded on iron pipe is sounding good as well though if I saw the term knob on a map I may not understand
CE 5290 is WB Whisenand in California. I've never heard of him and no maps of record bear that license number in the vicinity. One other map simply called it a found Iron Pipe Monument Tagged RE 5290
David Kendall, post: 423801, member: 12659 wrote: Sounds about right to me, it was found in Sacramento County near Fruitridge Elementary. I believe the thing is hollow though which lends to it not being able to take too many big hits with a hammer (McMillan's links showed solid forged bars) as one might expect from a tent stake.
I may pull it carefully like Nate said and investigate further then reset in original position.
2 1/2 inch knob welded on iron pipe is sounding good as well though if I saw the term knob on a map I may not understand
CE 5290 is WB Whisenand in California. I've never heard of him and no maps of record bear that license number in the vicinity. One other map simply called it a found Iron Pipe Monument Tagged RE 5290
If that is in Sacramento County then it is definitely a so-called button head monument. Norman Bailiff set those too.
David Kendall, post: 423801, member: 12659 wrote: I believe the thing is hollow though
There are several varieties of buttonhead, perhaps the result of different suppliers under government contact. The one pictured has an enclosed rounded top (cast or forged?) and could well be hollow. Another common variant has a flat machined top with a drill hole where it appeared to have been centered in a lathe. That one could be hollow as well, but it's pretty beefy in any case. There's also a smaller version of the latter that has a top diameter of about 1-1/2" instead of 2-3/4" or so.
David Kendall, post: 423646, member: 12659 wrote: I have to describe this on a map:
Any suggestions?
I would just embed that photo in the plat. Sometimes I make a monumentation sheet complete with photos.
David Kendall, post: 423646, member: 12659 wrote: I have to describe this on a map:
Any suggestions?
Bedpost?
Have you ever seen a corner monument listed as MGB? Every corner in a large subdivision had this at every corner inside the subdivision.
Years ago, I was searching for a buried pipe using a pipe locator. All of a sudden, I was getting sound all over the place. Weak signals, strong signals. I did a lot of scraping and digging over a 10' dia. area. the strange thing was that the signal that was strong in one place became weak a foot away. I was baffled so I decided to concentrate on one spot. About a foot down, I came to the corner of a car hood. Boy did I feel foolish! I never did find that damn pipe.
@frank-willis I realize that I'm looking at this thread almost 4 years after the fact, but... I think MGB means Machine Gun Barrel. The 1980s plat for a friend's property in Massachusetts shows multiple corners with "gun barrel set," and the deed's metes and bounds have corresponding calls for "gun barrel." The same surveyor set gun barrels on other properties too.
We've recovered all the gun barrels on my friend's property and they look to be .30-caliber barrels. See an example in the attached photos. It's hard to be sure whether we're looking at the muzzle or the breech, perhaps with the chamber cut off as part of a surplussing or scrapping process. Either way, this would be a rather thick contour for most rifle barrels, but typical for machine gun barrels (or yes, for the un-cut breech of a rifle barrel). Also, unless the surveyor had bought the barrels almost 40 years before using them (e.g. end of World War II canceled-contract, surplussed rifle barrels), the more likely type of military .30-caliber barrels in the 1960s ~ 1980s would have been machine gun barrels ?? i.e. after the US military had moved to 5.56mm rifles.
I'm thinking military surplus or scrap rather than civilian, because contract cancellations aren't typical in civilian gun production, and most hunters will never wear out a .30-caliber barrel in their lifetimes. The benchrest shooters wear out barrels, but there aren't enough of those people to supply much of a scrap market. The varmint shooters wear out barrels, but they're not shooting .30 caliber. I suspect the last wave of civilian surplus or scrap barrels was in the early 20th century, during the shift from black powder to smokeless powder.
The attached photos were made in 2019 and 2020. That's a metric (cm / mm) tape in the second photo.
?ÿ
Not sure what its original use was, called it a flanged pipe.
@flyin-solo A pipe for solid lead. ????
@bill-c When I was growing up there was an Air Force Base (later a SAC base) across the river from our farm.?ÿ One of my cousins and I used to poke through their trash dump that was outside the fence.?ÿ We found several machine gun barrels in the dump.?ÿ Most of them were about 3 feet long and threaded on the mounting end.?ÿ 50 caliber with the last 6 inches or so chrome or nickel plated.?ÿ I wished later that I had a few of those, they would have made unmistakable monuments.
Andy
Many years ago we were searching for what was supposed to be a 3/4" iron bar set about 40 years earlier at a typical lot corner in a small town.?ÿ We had one heck of a signal.?ÿ We dug down nearly a foot and the signal only became stronger.?ÿ Eventually we uncovered a hubcap positioned horizontally from the days before they became "wheel covers".?ÿ I had been joking with my helper that we might find a '36 Studebaker if we dug deep enough.?ÿ The hubcap read 'DODGE" so we decided it was a '36 Dodge and filled the hole back in.
@flyin-solo?ÿAh, when I first looked at your flanged pipe on my phone's small screen, I discerned only one side of it and thought that it too might be a gun barrel ?? hence my comment about a pipe for solid lead. I'm looking at it now on my computer and see that it's definitely not!
OPUS Shared Solutions requires a photo of the monument.?ÿ Not a bad idea in my opinion. I wouldn't do it for every corner.?ÿ More of a greyscale photo legend of the various types of monuments found. When the survey is completed record the map and reference it in your description and reports.?ÿ?ÿ
Reminds me a bit of something I haven't seen in decades.?ÿ Back in the days when corn was planted in checkrows there were two similar stakes set at each end of a field with a wire running tightly between them to form a straight line?ÿ There was also a little offshoot to one side that formed a step to ease setting the stake in hard soils.?ÿ After the planter ran the length of the wire, with little knots that tripped the seed box to drop seeds at that exact location, the stakes were pulled up, moved over the standard distance and then the planter went back in the other direction dropping the seed precisely.?ÿ The result were clusters of corn plants instead of solid rows.?ÿ The rows would line up north-south and east-west and along diagonals.?ÿ This allowed the cultivators to have three ways to root out unwanted competing plants.
In the first minute of this video you will see the stake I mentioned above.
My dad said that they only moved the posts one at a time, at whichever end of the field they happened to be. There was a little slack in the check wire which made it unnecessary to move both posts for each row.
Driving between Minnesota and Texas twice a year in the 1950s, we saw hundreds of miles of checkrowed corn. In fact, pretty much all of it was checkrowed in those days.
Watching youtube videos is the only time I've seen it being done.?ÿ Dad had moved on to standard row crop practice before I was born.?ÿ I have a photo somewhere of him cultivating checkrow corn in the 1940's?ÿ That was probably about the same time he raised castor beans.?ÿ Again, that is something I've heard about but never witnessed.?ÿ Several farmers in a local Swedish community raised broom corn back in those days, also.?ÿ I've only seen that in southeast Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle areas.