Back in the mid 60's we were staking lots of oil pipelines in Texas and several other states. Nobody had radios back then and our traverse points were quite often over 1500 feet from the instrument as we shot hill top to hill top. Naturally we had to use hand signals for numbers but at long distances we had orange flags and the I-Man always had a white handkerchief in the woods as it might be so dark that just his hand could not be seen. When setting a point [ often times called a hub even if we were just using 60D nails ] we had signals for: setting a point, give me the first point, double that and give me your second point, then, "turn on this when the head chain man placed his range point tip half way between the split. After the I man turned on the split and recorded the angle the point would be set and then be checked to make sure it went down straight and did not hit a root or rock.. Then there was the signal to come ahead and then maybe a double thumbs up for, "do it up, it's time to call it a day. Then there was a 3 to 5 mile walk out to where we left the truck that morning with all our normal equipment plus a 5 gallon water can . canteens, chainsaw, and cedar axes.
I remember the engineer that I was working for; throwing his hardhat on the ground because of certain situations trying to understand my signals but after some practice I was his right hand on the job site.....lol Thank you very much for bringing some memories to my head.....
Ok....so there is three different sets of hand signals for numbers. The illustration I have & what I was taught 20 years ago is nothing what he showed.
