Why “cut line”?

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"small pegs cut from branches with a clout in top"

Not too sure of the meaning of clout. The only way I've ever used clout is as a synonym for influence.

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from wikipedia...

clout, a nail with a large fat head.

😀 I almost spit my tea out

I don't understand what you're getting at.

Clout

Yes, galvanised nails 20 to 40 mm long, about 1.6mm diameter with a thin flat head.
They drive well into hotmix, but little else beside wood.
We use them as the mark on wooden pegs, both corner (boundary) pegs or station pegs. (traverse pegs)
We also have SH (Spring head) nails that traditionally are for holding down corrugated iron for roofing and wall cladding. Now replaced mostly by roof screws.

Clout

I love this place. I learn something nearly every day.

The (clout = nail) idea never entered my head. A slender 3/4 inch to 1-1/2 inch galvanized nail. The SH variety is what I've always labeled as a roofing nail. Sounds like a proper practice to me.

Clout

> I love this place. I learn something nearly every day.
>
> The (clout = nail) idea never entered my head. A slender 3/4 inch to 1-1/2 inch galvanized nail. The SH variety is what I've always labeled as a roofing nail. Sounds like a proper practice to me.

Never heard of it either. Makes a little sense, though. Our amigos to the south call nails "clavos". Must be a Latin root word in there somewhere.

It's not economically feasible around here. You cut a clear line and you are buying trees and bushes. People around here really love their vegetation. Trimming a limb to get line of sight is a no-no, but you do it in a manner the property owner can't tell. Leave no trace of trimming is the best practice to avoid penalties.

SD

For urban PITA bushy things on line we have a series of short polyprop yellow cords that we tie off offending branches.

It works well as long as there are not too many branches.

We also carry 'persuaders' (AKA hand pruners) as sandviks and axes are a sure sign of neighbourhood knicker twisters getting in the mix.

Cheers,

Derek

Clout

Clous is French for nail.

For us OLD PHARTS

Cutting line was inevitable. You cut the line LOW because you had to crank the angles, then you had to pull the tape for the distances. If you were staking centerline you had to walk the line 3 times. The lower the better. From experience I can tell you, if you fall on a tree "peg" you want it as short as possible.

Andy

I was 10 years on a USFS Cadastral crew. We always cut line so the fence builders could follow us and we were not allowed to calculate anything in the field. Got pretty good at falling Doug Firs up to 4' DBH and jack-strawed lodgepole:-@

For us OLD PHARTS

You're careful to find buried barb wire, barb wire grown into trees/stumps and any other evidence as mentioned earlier in this post while your cutting....but if you leave second growth overgrown higher your creating tripping/falling hazards that will hurt someone...we use to traverse along stone walls when we could...

My Dad began surveying at the start of WW2. He used to tell me about surveying for a defense plant. The gov specs didn't allow them to calc anything or even turn off line. They had 5 man crews with axes and two man saws that took down any size tree.

Clout

As HC said, we can learn a lot here.
Didn't know the derivatives mentioned above.
The other one, probably alluded to, was what most young blokes got in my younger days whether they deserved it or not, a clout round the ears.

Yea, two points for a dozer operator to line up on on each piece of grade with potential visibility goes a long way fast. Particularly here where coastal brush is 17' average and about 10' apart. Usually a 20' 2x2" is set braced at a POL, high point at the far end, and another where the operator can see just the top foot or two.

It can 3 hours for a man with a range pole to crawl 1000' so clear zone are followed until the line is crossed taking shots when possible. They usually come back bleeding a few places.

For this reason I've drilled a 5/8" hole in the roll cage of a couple of dozers and used an old range pole with the point removed and 5/8" x11 nut with an omni retro reflector on top. Making an offset line of 15-20' feet on the private or client side keeps from clearing where it should not be done. Give the operator a radio and send him towards the line. As he gets close, stop him, have make a wide spot to mark it, take a shot, calc the offset, tell him what that is and rely on him to get as close as he can, stop, call you on the radio for another shot and offset value.

Once he's on the line, generally it's forest on one side so tell him to stay off the forest and clear up a few hundred feet on the private side, maybe a shot on the way for later reference, and then get back on the line again. Once the operator clears brush back, with a shot or two for minor corrections, like +- 10 foot, he has a corridor to extend that is within 10 feet or so of the line.

If you fail to wire a wrench to his machine and tell him to stay out from under trees without removing the range pole, well there goes your pole and reflector. It's a dicey proposal, but usually the same rod man that came back scratched and bleeding is ready to follow the trail the blade has made and set precision offsets to speed up the alignment process and trim the brush right up to the line with the dozer where possible. Sometimes he ends up standing on top of the roll cage to get shots because brush is so high an fully extended pole is needed. Often there are rocky steep stretches here that prohibit a crawler from working at all, but few times it has really paid off on uniform, brushy slopes flatter than 2:1 to send a dozer into a zone and work outwards towards impassible gullies, rock formations etc.

Even if an owner has to hire labor to clear the steeper rocky parts, he now has a way to get the crew in and you also can set some precise points to occupy that are directly on the line to rapidly set more across the areas to be hand cleared. The owners I've done this for loved it and it changed their whole perspective on large segments of their land that they previously thought was useless.

> Quote from a previous post:
>
> “As Paul brought up a lot of surveyors will regard you as a lesser specimen due to the fact that you are not out there chopping 2 or 3k feet of line everyday.”
>
> Question is why would a survey crew cut line? It’s economically unfeasible.

Because not every site is GPS conducive. East Texas would be one.

FL/GA PLS., post: 321017, member: 379 wrote: Quote from a previous post:

“As Paul brought up a lot of surveyors will regard you as a lesser specimen due to the fact that you are not out there chopping 2 or 3k feet of line everyday.”

Question is why would a survey crew cut line? It’s economically unfeasible.

In my area it is the shortest way from A to B and is generally along the record title line. More than likely this is the same way the surveyor established the line in the first place.

FL/GA PLS., post: 321017, member: 379 wrote: Quote from a previous post:

“As Paul brought up a lot of surveyors will regard you as a lesser specimen due to the fact that you are not out there chopping 2 or 3k feet of line everyday.”

Question is why would a survey crew cut line? It’s economically unfeasible.

Most line cutting here is done for large development tracts. They need the topo for the drainage designs. And most crews around here have guys that are REALLY good at surveying AND cutting, so it makes sense for them to do that work. Why not get paid to do that instead of farming it out to a landscaper?

If you are just doing a large boundary then popping to the corners with GPS is easier for sure.

But what about when you find that monument and have major tree cover?? Are you cutting a big circle around it, across the adjoiners land ?

"Question is why would a survey crew cut line? It’s economically unfeasible."

That's a question for the guy paying the invoice; heck I'll pass out flyers for a Chinese restaurant if they're willing to pay me my hourly rate.