How to Use A Speed Square and Bevel Gauge to Find Angles in Woodworking

this is out of the woodwork I'm Tommy I'm gonna show you how to use a speed square and a bevel gauge to find angles in your woodworking I'm working on some built-ins and I need to build the cabinet's to fit into a space and that space has a fairly steep angle on it that I need to capture and transfer to my cabinet side here so let's just say from the floor up to where the angle begins is at this mark or better yet the height of this side needs to be before its angle starts is say here now the first thing on sight that I need to do is capture the angle and I did that with a bevel gauge it's a bevel gauge that's got a blade on it and these two sides are parallel to each other and the handle is parallel and that's important when you're using a bevel gauge so that when you capture an angle especially when it's fully extended that that angle will be the same on the outside and you can also have the same angle on the inside so you can mark it either side but I took the bevel gauge and I put it up against the wall and then I moved it up and down until it was flush with the wall tighten it up and that's your angle and then you can transfer that to wherever you need to so back at our cabinet side here what I want to do is take the speed square at the line that we measured want to strike a 90 degree line and this is what everything is going to reference off of so speed square is as its name suggests it's first and foremost a square which that's a 90-degree side it's got this little base that registers nice and flat against the surface assuming that surface is nice and flat and then it can also be used as a protractor you see this pivot point here assuming that's at a correct point you pivot this until it registers on the flat surface and that's your angle so let's transfer this is our measurement we want to line that up on the inside right where those two meet and a tip put your pencil in place and then slide the bevel up to it and that will let you allow for your pencil line so I strike my line this is the part we need to keep and this is the part we're going to cut out so this is the angle the pitch of the roof and we're cutting the side to follow that pitch and stay under it so let's say I need to measure this angle for whatever reason I need to know the actual degrees well the speed square can also act as a protractor so I'm again putting registering the base up against that flat side and then I'm putting this pivot point right at my measurement and keeping that pivot point secure and make sure it doesn't move I rotate it to meet the line and we'll just make sure that line this is in the same place all the way up and down and then I look over here and I see that it's exactly 35 degrees so what does that mean we've we figured out 35 degrees but what is 35 degrees because we've got an angle here we've got an angle here and then we've still got this 90 over here well it's important to note and I don't see this said a lot when talking about a speed square is as a protractor the speed square is measuring an angle in reference to the 90 degree line so with the speed square it's in the shape of a 90 degree angle it's measuring everything here on this side and as you tilt it down it's measuring the angle from this line to wherever you stop this is a 35 degree angle now why is that important well for miters that it usually isn't because you've got the edge of a board which that is your 90 degree reference and so when you do this say okay that's 35 degrees I bring it down to 35 degrees I make sure my pivot points lined up strike a line and that's what I need to cut out to have a 35 degree miter but you're referencing against this end here which hope is 90 degrees and flat so if I need to figure out the angle that the remaining board is going to be so that would be all of this then I just take this side which is 90 and add to my angle that I just measured and I get 125 degrees so the remaining board the inside angle there is going to be 125 degrees and then we can also easily find out the part that we're cutting away by taking since this is 90 we're taking 90 minus 35 which is 55 degrees so we're cutting away a 55 degree angle there this is an angle finder and generally you'll find a digital gauge like this one on an angle finder which makes it really easy so we can check our measurements here you see we're right at 125 point two point three let's talk about the bevel gauge a little more it's got the slot so it can slide for length and then as shown before it can tilt up and down for different angles so why would you need to lengthen and shorten it well you're capturing an angle such as this and you register it against the board and you get your angle flush but you also want the length then you shorten that to meet how long that angle is and once you tighten it up then you've got a really good representation of not only the angle but also the length of that piece that's angled the speed square has several other uses let's talk about the ones that are most useful to carpenters that are doing framing these common cuts and hip and hip Valley cuts these are all quick references for cutting rafters and these numbers represent the pitch so this is an 8 12 pitch 6 12 6 12 pitch and so on a couple other features you might find yourself using is the the rule on top which is right at 7 inches a little more than 7 inches if you got two by fours which are most often used as studs that will reach across to two by fours and you can strike lines across both of them at the same time but you can use this to hold the rule up to you know if we start at our line here and we want a three-inch line there very convenient to do that there's also a different model of speed square that has scribed notches here the little notches that will fit your pencil to keep it from moving around so you can make scribe marks but in this speed square you can do the same thing you've just got to try to keep your pencil stable so if I want to make a from the edge here if I want to make a 1-inch line a certain distance then I put my pencil up against that one inch line hold it really steady and then just yeah it's already moving and then just slowly take it across and I've got a one at subscribe to one inch line and then of course you see that this is slanted here that is a 45 degree angle so you've got a very quick 45 degree measurement and then you could also a little less accurate mark a 45 by line in the 45 degree up here here and strike a line so this would be 45 and that would be 45 so let's say you're following a set of plans and it calls for a 40 degree miter in the end of this 2x4 well the first the most obvious way to do this is to use your speed square line it up get it on 40 degrees strike a line and then cut it out now that's a perfectly valid way to do it but usually you've got more than one two cut and a better way to do this and to be more accurate from cut to cut is to use your bevel gauge so I'm going to show you how to do that and how quick it goes and then we'll step back and talk about what I did we start with the speed square at 40 degrees mark that line and then we're gonna set our bevel gauge to the inside angle bring that up transfer it to the piece of wood strike a line and then we'll cut this part out and that gives us a 40 degree miter now the most important thing to remember here is that a miter cut is measured by the part that you cut out so even though we're left with a 50 degree angle here it's the 40 degree part that we cut out that makes this a 40 degree miter so let me draw this 90 degree reference here 40 degrees 90 minus 40 is 50 and if you notice I set the bevel gauge to 50 degrees so you might be wondering how did that help me transfer the 40 degrees well since this is 50 degrees here what we did was recreate this diagram so this 90 degree reference is actually the end of the board and just like I put the bevel up on the angle like this we recreated that on this piece of wood so the 50 degree angle being down here and the 40 and 40 degree angle being up here remove the 40 degree piece and that's your miter joint let's talk about another situation that you might run into so if you need to measure an angle that is inaccessible so say I needed to measure the end of this 2x4 but it's attached and obviously I can't remove it to measure that angle what you do is take a bevel gauge assuming you've got access to get a bevel gauge in here push it up there flush and then you're gonna turn around and transfer that somewhere where you can measure it like we have been we can take speed square line it up so again for reference we'll draw this 90 degree line so you don't have to so this angle here is a 15 degree angle now that may see uncie - to it it may seem like because we measured with the bevel gauge like this that whatever's left over here should be the angle but that's not the case and we can draw a little line here to illustrate that because what's your what we're actually measuring is only this angle in reference to if it was flat 90 degrees so you can how that matches up if you've got more tips about using a speed square or a bevel gauge or finding angles in woodworking put those down in the comments if you're just getting started in woodworking and DIY or if you're interested there's a free download down in the description that you might find helpful don't forget to subscribe there's more videos on the screen if you want to watch those thanks for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: Out of the Woodwork

Views: 529,991

Keywords: how to use a speed square, how to use a bevel gauge, how to find angles in woodworking, using a speed square to find angles, using a speed square, how to find an angle with a speed square, speed square basics, speed square, how to find angles in carpentry, how to use an angle finder, how to cut crown molding, beginner woodworking, woodworking tools for beginners, basic woodworking tools, woodworking basics, woodworking, beginner projects, woodworking tools, out of the woodwork

Id: RtnnEnUJPu0

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019