Good info in the How Trees Grow paper! The railroad spikes I'm concerned with were set in trees only because there weren't any concrete structure...

Hope you meant rim of a sewer manhole!

How about acrylic clear coat spray?

To answer the original poster's question, this would be the easiest way to get a precise water surface elevation of a still pond.

I do this kind of thing all day, 5 days a week. I don't think there's a lot of precision involved. I do the best I can under varying conditions. The w...

Good point. The old SMI software would give the user a proportion to see the soundness of the resected point. According to Stan Trent of SMI, if you w...

I didn't know that.

I would like to mention that some people feel it's necessary to balance turns within tenths of a foot. That's a waste of time. The instrument should b...

I understand, but sometimes you encounter a dogleg. If you use the 10m spec in the situation I mentioned above, you will be way out of balance. I just...

Thanks for the reply. Concerning balancing backsights and foresights, do you think it would be a good idea to use a percentage of the backsight distan...

Thanks for posting the class URL. Good info available in PDF files.

Good info on rod joints as a possible source of errors.

Thanks for the reply and for clarifying leveling on hills.

Thanks for the reply. I don't see a correlation between closing back to the POB and errors caused by hills. What length invar rod do you have? How wou...

Thanks for the reply, read the specs.