Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 1206 — DD Form 1206, Grain-Size Analysis (Sieve Method), December 1999 — was established to Grain-Size Analysis (Sieve Method), and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
The edition in force is not stated, carried by the publisher as not stated, and edition discipline is stricter on a Department form than most people expect, precisely because supersession happens everywhere at once. There is no interval during which one service still works from the previous layout while another has moved on.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
Leave nothing empty. Where an item genuinely does not apply, N/A is the correct entry, because the record must distinguish between a question that was answered in the negative and a question that was never reached. An empty box carries no information about which happened. Date fields deserve particular care on a Department form, since the reviewer may write dates by a convention different from yours; use the format the form itself specifies.
Where the form collects personal identifiers, a Privacy Act Statement accompanies it, and its placement is meaningful. The statute requires disclosure at the point of collection — authority, purpose, routine uses, and the consequence of declining — so that the person supplying the information does so knowing what becomes of it. Reading it after you have filled the fields inverts the arrangement entirely.
Signature is the point at which a completed form becomes a certification, and the requirement follows from that. On paper it means ink in the designated block; electronically it means a credentialed digital signature, ordinarily applied with a Common Access Card in software that supports it. A name typed into the signature field is data, not an act — it demonstrates nothing about who entered it. The date beside the signature fixes when the certification was made, which is why a signed but undated block is treated as incomplete.
Every item on the standing defect list undermines the record in the same way — it leaves a question the file cannot answer later. Obsolete edition, empty mandatory boxes, illegible scanned handwriting, non-conforming dates, missing signature or date. Unclear entries are resolved from the printed instructions first and from not stated where the two texts diverge.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering 1 pages with roughly 113 fields.
Every format is free, as published government documents are. A note on tools, though — the interactive field layer that makes a fillable pdf useful is precisely the part browser viewers handle least reliably. Save the file, open it in a full pdf reader, and the fields behave as the form's designer intended.
What the form asks for
- 1. Project.
- 2. Date.
- 3. Job number.
- 4. Excavation.
- 5. Date completed.
- 6. Notes about sample/description.
- 7. Sample number.
- 8. Original sample weight.
- 9. Prewashed? Press space bar to mark X in first box if yes, second box if no.
- 10. Plus #200 sample weight, washed.
- 11. Minus #200 sample weight, washed.
- 12. Sieve size.
- 13. Sieve weight.
- 14. Sieve-sample weight.
- 15. Weight retained.
- 16. Cumulative weight retained.
- 17. Percent retained.
- 18. Percent passing.
- 19. Total weight retained in sieves (sum of column 15).
- 20. Weight sieved through #200 (weight in pan).
- 22. Total weight passing #200 sieve (20 + 11).
- 24. Error (8 - 23).
- 25. Error in percentage (24/8 X 100).
- 21. Washing loss (8 - (10 + 11))
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
A form is downstream of the policy that requires it, and revision usually starts there: a directive is reissued, a collection requirement is altered, notice language is updated by statute. The form is republished as a consequence. Since none of that reaches individual users, an archived copy quietly becomes wrong, and verifying not stated each time you download is the whole remedy.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 1206?
- DD Form 1206, Grain-Size Analysis (Sieve Method), December 1999
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?