Everything you can do with Combo/T-Squares and Why they are the Most Important Tool in ANY Shop

all right today I want to talk about squares how important it is to have a good one and I'll tell you in doing some research for this video I'm gonna blow your mind hole okay so having a good square is probably the most if not one of the most important tools in woodworking as well as machining having a good square is probably one of the first tools you should ever buy and you should never buy a cheap one they are terrible they're made out of really soft castings or aluminum and the markings on them are stamped which you don't want you really want a high quality square some of the times these squares can be really cost prohibitive I mean we're talking 75 to 150 bucks a piece but I'll show you a little bit later in the video I found a way to get balem squares which are just cosmetically not sellable by these companies minatoya precision engineering Brown and sharp some of the best squares on the market they send them off to this company because they have like a scratch in them or something or a little divot in the casting but they're super accurate now I've got lots of squares here we've got some starts which are always rated the best square but also the most expensive precision engineering which is always considered the best value there's sort of a mid priced high end square but they also make the squares for editorially Valley Brown and sharp we have some t squares and then we have some square kits that come with like center finding gauges and compasses and then I have a layout square now the first thing you should always look for in a good square is that the numbers are laser etched into them which means you will feel a little divot when you run your fingernail across it and that's gonna be really important more to talk about that later in sort of the uses for a square we're getting into this doing a little bit of a deep dive here first but then I'm going to knock out we've got about 20 different 20 to 25 different uses for squares we're gonna bang through those and get through this video so we're gonna just crush your knowledge gap on squares let's bring it into the bench here let me show you what we have here okay so here we have this is the 6-inch start I keep in my vest and this is a midotaur blem that I got these are originally a hundred and twenty three bucks I believe and I got this I think for $40.00 one of the things I love about this midotaur one is how easy it is to read the start has a very shiny surface whereas the ones made by PE see they're the ones who make the ones for editorially Valley Brown and sharp and of course themselves PDC have a really cool satin chrome finish which is really great for reading very easy to use and then over here we have our tea squares same kind of deal these were all blends that I got again 60% off what I like about tea squares is they're really accurate so PC makes them to a 1.5 thousands of squareness whereas they're twelve inch squares are four thow over 12 inches which is very very tight tolerances but that's the maximum allowance that they'll allow something to go out here I have my Veritas layout square this is just what I use for laying out joinery great square we're not really gonna talk about these in these video but I just want to let you know it's a square I love and it's always in my best and then that over here we have a couple different kits now this is a bleb kit from PE c precision engineering company same exact thing as the start it comes with a compass a center finder and then your standard combo square I love all of these these are all squares I love and use and I have them sort of at different tools or in my vest and for different things now let me go through we're gonna start with measuring and marking so when you go for all the ways that I used this for like measuring in my joinery and that kind of stuff and then we're gonna go through all the other uses for a square that's great for like machinery setup and different little tips and tricks I have we're gonna bang through these with some b-roll and I think you're really gonna enjoy this so stick with me here again all these will be linked down below in the pinned comment in the description okay so we're gonna get into measuring and marking here but first you want to check and make sure that your squares accurate this is a very simple thing to do you want to put it against an edge that you know is flat something that your combo square is great for checking and you take your square you put it against the edge make sure that it's locked down and you just draw a straight line and then you flip the square over the other way along the same edge and you draw a line right next to that one and you want to make sure that those two are parallel to each other and as you can see this one perfectly is and it's the same thing with your small squares and again these were the ones I was saying these types of squares are great for joinery I use these tons for dovetails and I'll show you how in a little bit but same thing for these just make a mark flip it over just like that and those both are perfectly parallel to each other so we know that we have an accurate square first thing I want to do is show you how to make an accurate mark at a specific distance so let's say that I wanted to make a two inch mark you're using a tape measure or your square to make a mark I'll set this at two and a half inches here take that and I'm just going to make a little tick mark right on the edge of my board there we go we have our tick mark and now let's say I want to make a strike a line across a board I just find that tick mark it's very easy to do by just sliding your marking knife and you'll feel it click in there and then you slide your combo Square up to it and then you just make a line and sometimes I'll do one kind of light at first because grain can have a tendency to wander when you're going long grain across the grain it's much easier and then I'll just make a little bit of a darker one and you get a perfectly accurate mark at exactly that measurement we did and you can look at it and we'll take this and you can see sliding my thing all the way across it's perfect every single time the next thing I love to use squares for this works obviously with t-square or a combo square is drawing a long straight line down a piece now one of the great things about squares is that they really have thought of everything on these now you see this line here that's for locking your blade into the casting of your square but it's also great for locking a pencil into the edge and accounting for the width of the lead because if you put on the edge here you're gonna be off by at least half the width of your lead but if you lock it into your little gap here it's very easy to draw a line without your pencil slipping off and it accounts for the thickness of the lead so it's a great way to do that you'd have false sorts of things dedos you need to draw a line for where you're gonna put your screws if you're putting together a cabinet there's a hundred million different ways to use that now another great use for squares is a depth gauge especially for mortises or dedos you need to figure out you've already cut your mortise you need to figure out how long your tenon should be you can simply take your square stick it into your more slide it down make sure your bottom down and then that is exactly the depth that you make your tenon and this works of course for either squares just pop it in there and then you can find an exact depth for a tenon now another great thing about squares is all the tick marks are actually engraved into the metal and actually you can hear it here but what's awesome about that is when you need to get a measurement now this part of your square is also going to be square so you can put that against the board get it flush with the edge and then let's say you needed a mortise to start right at 3 inches you can use that tick mark to put the edge of your marking gauge in you can feel it click in there and then you can just use that mark and you know that's gonna be exactly exactly 3 inches perfect every single time and you can use that for transferring measurements to different boards what's also great about those tick marks is let's say you needed repeated measurements with dividers I use these a lot with dovetails and I needed a 1-inch tail and I need to make sure that that was 1 inch I can click that in there it's very clicked in and then I can spread that out you can feel it right when it clicks in and I know that is exactly 1 inch so we'll put that in there and Boop measure that exactly 1 inch that's the great thing about good squares is the tick marks in the ruler now here's a few just measuring things that a square can do that are absolutely incredible one is when you're doing joinery especially dovetails things that are hand cut you need to make sure that there's nothing in the middle that's gonna keep that from sealing up so you can put it and drag it across and make sure there's no humps in the middle you just look in there make sure that this doesn't come off the edge and that's great and of course a square is great for checking squareness just like that and then something the combo square could do that the t-square can't is also check for 45 so as you can see perfect 45 and that's really easy to do right here's a fun little trick for finding Center especially if you're a Turner this is a big deal but also if you just want to get something in the very center it's very simple you just set your pretty close to center and then you just draw four lines from each edge and this is great because you just don't have to measure and then you can look right here this is your exact center right there another great use for a square is these blades are so well machine that they're extremely flat over a 12-inch area so if you're looking to see if something is flat you very simply can just take your blade put it on top look for any light gaps this is of course absolutely perfect it's a great way to check small areas for flatness okay so that's a lot of ways that I use squares for measuring now let's get into how I use it around the shop for tool setup and those kind of things one cool little trick about squares is they all come with a little scribe so if you can't find your marking knife or your Jimmy dressed ice pick there's a great little scribe built right into your thing which is very simple to use okay so here's five ways that I used my combo and T squares at the table saw number one to check that my blade is square ensuring that the blade on my combo square is in between two teeth against the saw plate I also can take the blade out of my combo square and use it to check 45 I can use it to check that my miter gauge is square I can use it to check that my miter gauge is at 45 and I can very easily use it as a depth gauge which is great because it's hard to tell where the apex of a saw blade is and this really accounts for that squares are great for setting depth on your router table especially if you're transferring like a mortise or a tenon and you're cutting that it's really great to set the depth using a square these smaller six inch and four inch squares are great depending on the reefs off your bandsaw for checking that your blade is square to the table the jointer is where the 12-inch square really excels not only couldn't you be use to check the squareness of the fence but it could also be used to check that your outfeed table is coplanar with the very tops of your blades now another great thing about combo squares is you can get these 12-inch 4 piece kits now one thing to know when you're ordering squares is that they are labeled as 4r or 16 r 4r means there's four different measurement gradiation whereas on the 16 ones those are more engineer ones that has nothing to do what I'm going to tell you here about the four piece kit switch the four pieces are the main body Casting the blade a compass protractor and a center finder now the way that compass and center finder work are great so the compass you insert the ruler in there and what's really cool about this is you can set it to any angle you want and these measurements are very accurate here on this side you've got your zero mark there let's say we wanted something at a hundred and forty or forty degrees or let's say sixty degrees that's a very common measurement and in triangle you set it right there those lines line up perfectly tighten your compass and then you can just make your 60-degree mark just like that now the center finder works the exact same way as the compass or the main body you stick your ruler in and this works with round or square objects you just do it with it was round you could just do it in two locations or first square you can see this piece as a rectangle not a perfect square so we can find the exact center of that so there's 1 million 721 things you can do with a square I highly recommend you go get a good one if you want one on a budget that is a fantastic square maybe it has like a little scratch in it or something go down and check out those blend squares amazing amazing prices for those but a square well taken care of and treated right can last for generations and it's one of the most commonly used tools in woodworking and I highly suggest you don't buy a cheap one you know those like eye gauging ones no I'm sorry I didn't didn't mean that those empire' ones and like those machinist squares you see for like 10 bucks 15 bucks on amazon those are garbage they don't guarantee squareness and just because it looks like a machinist square it doesn't mean it is guys thanks for watching if you want to support the channel head over the cat's boses store pick up a stop block a dovetail jig or a t-shirt guys stay safe in the shop thanks for watching have a good day [Music] you

Channel: Jonathan Katz-Moses

Views: 217,866

Rating: 4.9145546 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, square, woodworking square, woodworking tools, try square, woodworking tips, woodworking projects, speed square, precision woodworking square, how to make a woodworking square, wood square, woodworking plans, handtool woodworking, hand tool woodworking, best machinist square for woodworking, woodworking try square, woodworking jigs, woodworking shop, woodworking project, woodworking classes, woodworking class, diy woodworking, jonathan katz moses

Id: 5Bvd7JD6jYA

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020