Framing Square Basics - How to use one

welcome back to make build modify I'm Justin and today I want to go over framing squares I want to go over all the charts and all the little marks and mystery numbers and in the end I want to show you some drawing tricks and some things you can do with circles so let's get to it when you're working with another carpenter and you're using a framing square and they're calling out measurements it's good that both carpenters have a clear idea of the reference points on the square and their names for the parts of the square the larger portion is considered the body and the smaller portion is considered the tongue and the outer corner is considered the heel the tongue is 16 inches from the heel to the end and it's an inch and a half wide and the body is 24 inches from the heel to the end and it's 2 inches wide there's a face and a back to a framing square and you can tell it's face up when you see the number the tool number stamped in the heel area of the square you can also have the body in your left hand and the tongue in your right hand with the corner facing away and you know you have it face up the opposite it'll be face down along the edges of the square you'll see subdivisions they differ depending on what edge you're using front and back in this case there's sixteenths noted on the two outer edges and eighths noted on the inner edges on the steel square it's the same it's just not noted and on the Blue Square that I have its flopped you've got hate's and sixteenths on inner and outer edges let's flip them over and take a look at the other scales there are twelfths on the outer edge of the tongue and the body and tenths on the inner edge of the tongue and sixteenths on the inner edge of the body twelfths are very handy for scaling plans if you have a set of plans that are one inch on the plans for every foot in reality then each one of these delineations will be an inch on the plans also if it's a quarter inch per foot on the plans then each delineation would be four inches in reality so that's very handy tenths works for engineering plans where the measurements are listed in decimal form and there are also some other things on the square that give you decimal format answers that you need the tenth scale to use those so you don't have to convert back to fractions to be able to get those measurements correct the steel framing square has a very handy for that's not seen very often at least I haven't seen it very often it's a hundredth scale and what you would use this for is stepping off literally hundredths of an inch with your dividers to get an accurate measurement and there are lines for every hundredths in this the brace scale is a series of numbers listed on the backside of the tongue and they have to do with finding the length of a knee brace for a beam and post let me show you what I'm talking about here's a drawing of two posts and a beam and here's a knee brace and in this case we measure 48 over and 48 up and we have a knee brace that's 67 inches and 88 hundredths of an inch and that's what this chart does it gives you this diagonal measurement let's look at 48 right here 48 inches over 48 inches up 67 inches and 8807 inch so if you take any of these measurements 36 over and 36 up and you get 50 inches and 91 hundredths of an inch also you can use these for a larger square so if you're measuring over 48 and up 48 you can measure 67 and 80 eight hundredths of an inch on a diagonal and you can tell that your two members are Square to each other it's another way of creating a larger square than a framing square for checking your rooms your walls things like that if you need to get the hundredths then what you use is this hundredths scale and step it off so you'd measure out for example in the 48 48 67 you would measure out 67 inches and then you would get your dividers out step-off eighty eight hundredths and you would add it to your 67 and you would have the appropriate length for your knee brace this is the board foot chart it allows you to find the volume in board feet of any given plank within the limits of the chart let me show you what a board foot is so you understand what the charts all about this is one board foot twelve inches wide 12 inches long and one inch tall it's a measure of volume and it's important for figuring how much lumber you're going to use for a project knowing that a piece of wood that's 12 inches wide and 12 inches long is one board foot and you know that it's 8 feet long it's going to be eight board feet if it's 9 feet long it's 9 board feet and so on if you have a plank that is say 5 inches at 8 feet long you go over to your 12 inch to find out the foot length 8 feet long it's the first row you go over to your 5 and you see that you have three board feet and 4/12 of a board foot the number on the left is the number of board feet the number on the right is twelfth of a board foot let's do another one eight let's say you have plank that's eight inches wide and 14 feet long so you go to 12 14 is one up from the bottom go back to eight eight-inch plank one up from the bottom nine board feet and for twelfths of a board foot you may have noticed that there is no 12 in this column and that's because any board of any width that's 12 feet long is its own width in board feet for example if you have a plank that's eight inches wide one inch thick and twelve feet long it's eight board feet if you have a plank that's 10 inches wide one inch thick and twelve feet long it's ten board feet because of this they left that row out so they could add another row for the carpenter to use for other figures the board foot chart can also be used for multiplication you use the numbers that coincide with the columns and you use the numbers that are in the twelves column for the factors so for example if you want to measure if you want to multiply 15 times 15 you would use the bottom row and the 15 column and you would get 18 foot 9 and you just pull out your tape measure to 18 foot 9 and it's 225 let's do another one let's say we want to multiply 11 times 14 so you'd go down to the fourth grow go over to 14 and you get 12 foot 10 and again you pull your tape measure out to 12 4 10 12 foot 10 150 for this newer blue square doesn't have the board foot chart like this black square does instead it they've replaced it with a bunch of other helpful charts and I'll go over those really quickly this chart is designed for counting studs joist sir rafters anything that's running on a 16 inch Center and what it gives you is the stud count on the left and the plate lengths on the right so let's do eight and I'll show you how it works so you start with your tape measure first stud is at the end 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and that's at 9 foot 4 inches and every single one of these has the same relationship and you go all the way out to a 40 count wall that's 52 feet long this is a conversion chart 4 inches 2 feet in decimal format so 12 inches is 1 foot 11 inches is 0.92 feet and so on all the way down to 1/8 of an inch this chart converts the roof pitch over 2 degrees so you can use your protractor to mark your lumber or your chop saw set your chop saw to cut your lumber the numbers on the left of the roof pitch the numbers on the right are the degrees this is a pilot hole would screw chart gives you this would screw size on the left and the pilot hole size in decimal inches on the right this is a fractional 2 decimal conversion chart for inches 1/32 all the way up to 15 16 these little dots along the face of the tongue are called the Octagon scale and they allow you to draw an octagon from a square and it's a pretty easy process let me show you how to do it let's do an 8 inch square so first we have to mark our square out you have to mark the middle of each side and the next step is to count out eight dots this is an 8-inch square so you count out eight dots there's five six seven eight you go from the middle of each side of the square and draw a line like that and then you connect those lines and there's knocked a gun this is it this is the last table we're going to go over on the framing square after that I'm going to show you some cool drawing tricks this is called the rafter tables and it goes over commonly-used increments for cutting roofs so a roof carpet roof framing carpenter would use this I'm not going to get into the tables too much for roof framing because that's outside the scope of this video but if you are going to cut roofs you will end up probably buying a reframing book and it'll refer to this chart in that book most of them do so let's say you want to build a little roof a little doghouse roof and the roof is 24 inches across this is called the span and this section here to here would be 12 inches that's called the run and this section is the rise from here to here let's say that you have an 8 inch rise that would make this roof eight inches of rise for 12 inches of run or an 8 12 roof and you'll see it mark like this on plans if I wanted to find the distance the length of this rafter I would go to the square in the table I would find the 8-inch number 4 8 inch pitch and I would find the top row which is the common rafter and I would see it's 14 point 4 2 inches now if I wanted to make this roof ten times larger it would be 120 inches 80 inches and you move the decimal over here and it would be 144 point 2 inches that increment is designed to help you find the length of any rafter on any pitch on the scale there's also a hip valley row and the hips and valleys have a different run than a common run so that increment is a little larger and you can see it changing throughout there is also Jack rafters and the side cut of rafters I'm not going to get into those but those are very useful for cutting roofs and important numbers to know so this is a great cheat sheet for a roof cutter it's good to know how to draw an equilateral triangle because the corners are 60 degrees in each corner this is a quick technique with a square to get to that if you don't have a compass first you draw a baseline just for reference then you draw a 90 degree mark to that let's make this one 18 inches wide so from one side of the line I'm going to go 9 inches and from the other side of the line I'm gonna go 9 inches so now you take the heel of your square line it up on your mark and you swing until 18 inches passes through the line here and you do the same thing here what's neat about this is this being 60 this is 90 and this is 30 when you're using a drawing triangle it matches so it's another useful way of getting those angles if you don't have one of these this one's really cool this one gives you the circumference of a circle based off the diameter of a circle so to start you draw a baseline you slide your square up to that line mark 7 inches go up here mark 22 inches take a straight edge and draw through those two lines this relationship a 7 inch circle has a 22 inch circumference now if we slide the square down to say 6 that relationship is constant so if we line this up correctly I'm gonna guess this is saying about 18 point 8 or so let's do the math 18 point 8 4 not bad let's do 5 so I took square over 2 5 inch mark right here make sure the base line is lined up well find where this line comes through maybe 15 points 7 let's check it not bad pretty close this is a really good trick for finding the surface area of a circle that is equal to the area of two smaller circles and you would want to use this for HVAC where maybe you're finding the volume of ducts and you want to size a duct to match the other two smaller ducts basically what you need to know is the diameter of the two smaller circles so let's just call this one eight and this one twelve now what you do is go up eight inches on one portion of the square and 12 inches over on the other and you measure the diagonal in this case fourteen point four roughly so that creates the diameter of this one matter of fact I think that's on the frame each square for an eight 12 pitch yes fourteen point four two now we can figure the area now let's see how close these are one six three point three one subtract fifty point two six from that one thirteen point oh five and that's pretty close to the other number here you can use this method with any two sized circles it doesn't have to be both 8 in 12 it could be any inch increment matter of fact it could be anywhere on the rule and it'll give you the third circle and you can use this with triangles rectangles and squares as long as you use like sides it's the same relationship okay this is the last one I'm gonna show you how to draw a circle with a square first draw a line for reference and let's draw like a twelve inch circle mark 12 inches on the line this is the diameter of the circle now you take nails set those on those marks and I'm going to use a sharpie so you can see it place the Sharpie in the corner the inside corner of the square and you're gonna swing the square around and keep pressure on the nails and there's a circle thanks for watching guys there are some good framing squares linked in the description and if you think I've earned it please subscribe

Channel: Make Build Modify

Views: 609,133

Rating: 4.9127274 out of 5

Keywords: framing square, rafter square, roof framing square, carpenters square, steel square, square, rafters, roof framing, framing square basics, how to use a square, speed square, cutting rafters, stair building square, brace scale, board foot, board foot table, octagon table, octagon scale, inch to decimal chart, drawing triangles, drawing circles, compass, roof pitch chart, right angle square, construction square

Id: 1TOszum18Io

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2017