Wartime "Shortage" Disk?

[+pgrig]

Yesterday I found a disk of a type I haven't seen before:

 

 

That I haven't seen any of these might just be because we seem to have very few early 1940s disks around Boston. Or it might be that this disk, monumented in 1943, was made at a time that standard disk materials were rationed. Opinions, anyone?

 

This is MY0233 in Rockport, MA, which does not seem to be in the GC.com database (unless the db is acting up on me again).

 

Thanks,

-Paul

 

P.S. The stamping, "T 15 1943" is almost illegible, but can be seen in a high magnification blowup of the center of the disk, where is appears above and below the centerline, thusly:

 

[AZcachemeister]

Yes, I've seen a few of those out here in AZ.

I assumed (like you), that they were iron rather than brass or bronze due to wartime shortages/rationing.

Steel pennies were in vogue as well.

[NGS Surveyor]

Yes, these cast iron bench marks (elevation points only) were used during WW II because of the shortage of brass. This is the first one I have seen from 1943, the others were all 1944 or 1945. Here is some text from my paper on marks:

 

"Another style of bench mark was made of cast iron during the later part of World War II

due to the shortage of brass. This iron disk contained the 18mm high lettering “USC&GS BM” with a crossed slash in the center. Examples from 1944 and 1945 have been found."

 

Obviously I am going to have to change the last sentence to 1943!

 

Thanks.

GeorgeL

NGS

[+pgrig]

Cool!

 

See? Around here, you asks a question and you gets the answer!

 

Thanks guys,

 

-Paul

[Team Fawlty]

It makes sense for 1943 as well, since automobile production was ceased in mid 1942 through 1945.

Nickels were made of silver during that period. 1943 pennies were made of steel.

 

Team Fawlty

Edited September 13, 2008 by Team Fawlty

[+Shorelander]

I found a pair of these in Nahant from 1943 as well: MY0038 and MY0045. pgrig, if you have more nerve than I do in asking private property owners for permission in the search, you should be able to find some neat marks (if they still exist) down in Nahant!

[+pgrig]

Shorelander--

 

For better or worse, I am fearless about knocking on doors and asking permission to hunt. And yes, I have a "packet" ready to go on the "Nahant Circuit." I saw your victories and defeats, and am ready to follow in your footsteps, even though they have now led you far afield...

 

I want to visit the old site of Battery Murphy in Nahant, the 2 16" guns in part controlled by my Cape Ann FC towers. I know it's there somewhere (on a site now of Northeastern Univ.), I just need a bit more detail.

 

And yes, I have the sheets for the "privately held" FC towers in what appear to be the upper crusty parts of Nahant. I'll be there... [This is a situation in which I think I'll check in with the Nahant police before I go out. ]

 

Aloha,

 

-Paul

[+pgrig]

NGS Surveyor pls copy--

 

Both of Shorelander's iron disks are also from 1943! I'll bet there was a party that went out at that time to prepare for the setting of the Fire Control tower marks up and down the coast (Nahant to Portsmouth, NH) and "pounded iron" for these. Why else would this much effort be expended at a time when the Army Engineers had many other things on their minds?

[+Rev Mike]

I am going to have to keep an eye out for those next time I am in the area.

 

pgrig, I see you were just out on Cape Ann a few days after I was.

I was there for different reasons and did not get a chance to look for any benchmarks since I only had info for Middlesex county available to me at the time.

 

Hope to cross paths with you someday.

 

- Rev Mike

[kayakbird]

Pulling up this old thread to show the one I unexpectedly stumbled upon yesterday as I finished up a great swing through northeast Oregon. As in the current thread on STATE SURVEY disks, it does not filter out with various GSAK text searches of 'IRON'. In fact, very few do. Has anyone logged one of these in Oregon?

 

J 391 1945

 

 

Deadheading back to Montana for several hours (days!) of photo uploads and NGS recoveries. MEL

[+shorbird]

Here's one from Washington State from 1944: TR0548

Edited April 23, 2012 by shorbird

[+DragonsWest]

GU2250 - T 738 RESET 1945, original disc reset in 1963 (likely when the road was widened) Oddly enough, the original station description states 1944 as the date of monumenting.

 

[kayakbird]

DragonsWest,

 

Since these are one of my favorite sub-sets of bench marks (flared rods are #1) I'm really hoping that you will follow along the 738 string and find a couple more. I do not have GSAK for California so can't filter for 'IRON BENCH-' and looking at that run after pinning Santa Cruz county on Google Earth with DSWorld it looks like that filter would only work about half the time anyway.

 

Do you think that the original mark was actually 'RESET' or maybe just had the date added in 1963? NGS recovered the original in 1976!

 

GU2251

GU2251 HISTORY - Date Condition Report By

GU2251 HISTORY - 1944 MONUMENTED CGS

GU2251 HISTORY - 1976 GOOD NGS

GU2251

 

PS: Hate to use the five letter B word but I think that some of the recent logs show P 51 activity. kayakbird

[+EdrickV]

I've got a (now) somewhat out of date state archive of California datasheets and searching for "iron bench" only turns up 62 results. Those 62 all have stampings with 1944-1946 dates. So that might be another way to find iron benchmarks. (I have a macro that, among other things, copies the stamping info into a custom field, but a regex query could likely also be used to find 1944/45/46 stampings.)

[TillaMurphs]

... these are one of my favorite sub-sets of bench marks

kayakbird

Curse you kayakbird. Ever since you mentioned these some months back I have been trying to find one. No success so far.

 

 

PS: Hate to use the five letter B word but I think that some of the recent logs show P 51 activity. kayakbird

Could it be another obscure kayakbird term or am I just obtuse? “P 51 activity”? Does that mean there is a Mustang in the area?

 

 

By the way - nice find DragonsWest

[kayakbird]

HELP, HELP, HELP, PLEASE!

 

Doing some preliminary map pinning on GE for a round-about road-trip to Moab, UT in mid-October via eastern Oregon and northern Nevada. targets will be early 1900 chisel marks (lots of possibles) and late World War II 'IRON BENCH-MARK' disks. Using GSAK filters 'IRON BENCH-' or 'IRON DISK' I have located a nice string in Nevada, but only three possibles in Oregon.

 

DUMB LUCK FIND

 

 

The one above that I accidentally found in April does not filter. Because of that I just spent a bunch of time looking through various 1944 thru 1946 strings all over Oregon for a Geo log photo of another IRON DISK. Nothing was found.

 

If anyone has one in Oregon please post it here.

 

Thanks, kayakbird

[kayakbird]

Delete duplicate post?!? MEL

Edited August 18, 2012 by kayakbird

[+EdrickV]

 

The one above that I accidentally found in April does not filter. Because of that I just spent a bunch of time looking through various 1944 thru 1946 strings all over Oregon for a Geo log photo of another IRON DISK. Nothing was found.

 

If anyone has one in Oregon please post it here.

 

Thanks, kayakbird

 

Have you tried looking for the other disks in the series (391) that the disk you found is in? Because that's where I'd start. If they used one of those disks for one of the marks in the series, they may have used them for others in the same series.

[kayakbird]

 

Have you tried looking for the other disks in the series (391) that the disk you found is in? Because that's where I'd start. If they used one of those disks for one of the marks in the series, they may have used them for others in the same series.

 

 

EdrickV,

 

Good advice if I do get back into eastern Oregon since two in the 391 string do filter.

 

My targets in April were first chisel marks and then "AND STATE SURVEY" when I figured out that there were several strings of them that don't filter either. When I found J 391 I was near my cut-off time to head home on the last day of a ten day road trip, didn't have any signal to add pins to GE; so didn't even run a GSAK filter.

 

Really hoping that somebody can narrow down the search zone. MEL

[TillaMurphs]

HELP, HELP, HELP, PLEASE!

 

Doing some preliminary map pinning on GE for a round-about road-trip to Moab, UT in mid-October via eastern Oregon and northern Nevada. targets will be early 1900 chisel marks (lots of possibles) and late World War II 'IRON BENCH-MARK' disks. Using GSAK filters 'IRON BENCH-' or 'IRON DISK' I have located a nice string in Nevada, but only three possibles in Oregon.

 

If anyone has one in Oregon please post it here.

 

Thanks, kayakbird

 

Kayakbird.

 

I spent about 4 hours going through the full list of the A-Z 391 string and analyzing each of them for the possibility of iron disks (including armchair Google Earth searching). Other than your J 391 find there are no geocaching.com finds for any of these. I will e-mail you an Excel spreadsheet of my analysis with details for each one.

 

C, D and E are described as "BRONZE" in their datasheets.

 

I would say A, B and N hold the best potential for still existing and being accessible (during our March trip we saw the witness post for N but did not have time to look for the disk - drat). Although, A and B might be bronze since C,D and E are listed as Bronze.

 

X, Y and Z are great possibilities, and Y is described as an “Iron Disk” – the only problem is the only realistic access is via water from the Snake River. (… if only someone had a boat or a KAYAK…?)

 

The TillaMurphs

[kayakbird]

 

-----realistic access is via water from the Snake River. (… if only someone had a boat or a KAYAK…?)

 

The TillaMurphs

 

TillaMurphs,

 

ETA Farwell Bend State Park, with extra kayaks, mid-October 2012.

 

Thanks for putting all the above together - looks like that entire string is worth working out on my way to Moab.

 

kayakbird

[kayakbird]

 

-----realistic access is via water from the Snake River. (… if only someone had a boat or a KAYAK…?)

 

The TillaMurphs

 

TillaMurphs,

 

ETA Farwell Bend State Park, with extra kayaks, mid-October 2012.

 

Thanks for putting all the above together - looks like that entire string is worth working out on my way to Moab.

 

kayakbird