How To Use A Speed Square | The Basics Of Woodworking

this video is brought to you by the woodbrew online store over on our website we offer project plans for many of the projects we do here on the channel these project plans are instant pdf downloads they're color coordinated they have shopping lists cut lists cut layouts everything you possibly need in order to get the project done so next time you're considering doing one of the projects you see on our channel consider purchasing a set of our project plans to support this channel and to make your life a whole lot easier the first 50 people to use coupon codes speed square at checkout are going to get 50 off their next set of project plans be sure to check the link in the description below if you've ever spent much time around a construction site or watching youtube videos about making things chances are you've seen a speed square these triangular devices yeah i know that part's a little bit weird have been used by makers for decades originally invented by albert j swanson in 1925 swanson speed squares have become a household name and it's in fact the square that i grew up using learning to woodwork as well you likely clicked on this video because you're brand new to woodworking you're trying to figure all this out and i know trust me from experience it is daunting to jump into woodworking there's just so much information out there so many tools you think you may or may not need and you're just trying to figure all this stuff out so hopefully in this video i'm going to be able to show you how you can use a speed square so you don't end up like myself where i went years using a speed square for mundane tasks but never actually learning how to use it to its full potential if you're new to the channel my name is dylan and my fiance molly and i started a custom woodworking business right outside of high school and we kind of shipped it into creating online content to hopefully share with you guys how you can get into woodworking as well so without further ado let's jump into this video now this is typically what you think of when you think of a speed square this is your all aluminum swans and speed square this is the speed square that made the household name of swanson and aka the copyrighted term of speed square so popular it's this square right here but there are a lot of differences between speed squares so in this first section i'm going to show you some of those differences and what you should maybe look for when you're purchasing your own speed square so starting off we'll look at these two swanson speed squares the one on the right is mine it is a newer model and the one on the left is my dad's that was purchased over 20 years ago you can see that they are basically identical it really shows the quality of tool that these swans and speed squares are but the primary differences are they've added these scribe lines here and they've added this diamond shape up here which i'll show you what both of those features are used for later in the video but a lot of cheaper speed squares are going to look like this one here and they're not going to have a lot of cool features built in like the scribe lines and that diamond shape which makes cutting rafters easier so when you're looking for a speed square look and see what kind of features are built into the speed square after watching this video you'll know what a lot of those features are and some things that you can do with them but keep in mind when you're looking for a speed square they don't all have those features built in and some things like the diamond shape is patented by swanson speed square another thing about these swanson speed squares is they all come with the swanson speed square blue book which is a really great thing to have i believe you can purchase these independently but this is the one that came with my dad's and it's from copyrighted in 1991 and this is a really great thing to have it gives you a lot of conversions shows it shows you everything about the speed square and how to use it it'll go into more detail than i am going to go into in today's video showing you rafter details and all kinds of different things it also has in the back of the book which i think is really cool it has all of your measurements based on the size of a building for all of your rafters so you basically pick the length width of your building and it tells you exactly how long that rafter is going to need to be with the pitch of the roof it's a really handy booklet to have especially if you're going to be doing any of the more advanced uses of a speed square which i will touch on briefly in this video so this too is a swanson speed square except for this is a 12 inch model and it's their speed light model meaning that it's a composite material as you can see mine has chipped off over here and it is also broken right there in the middle so although these are very nice and lightweight and really comfortable to use i don't think i can recommend these just simply because mine has not lasted very long so another thing to keep in mind is the material in which the speed square is made out of so this is also a 12 inch speed square this one is made from all aluminum it's made by brand called empire and this one is a little bit different from the other one it has these large scribe marks over here they're designed for using large carpenter pencils like this one over here and they don't work as well with smaller pencils so again something to look at and think about when making a purchase when you flip this one over it also has this really handy little conversion chart to convert a common rafter conversions for run to actual degrees so if you're doing like a 612 pitch on a roof then you can actually find what degree mark that is if you're going to use say a miter saw or you want to use one of the many markings over here very handy to have built in but something that i don't find that useful as someone who doesn't do a lot of framing so this isn't really a selling point for me on this particular speed square the last speed square that i have in my shop to show you guys is one made by husky crescent also makes a very similar one to this and what's unique about this one is first of all the thickness it's a bit thicker aluminum it also is painted unlike the other ones and the lettering is white which is nice but i don't know if this will hold up for as long as the swanson speed square would it also has all of these really nice scribe lines which are great for a small and large pencil so i do really enjoy that i don't enjoy however that this doesn't go the full seven and an eighth inches like most speed squares do this can be tricky and i'll show you why in a later part of the video but one really unique part of this square is it's extendable so if you push down here flip over this turns into a 12 inch speed square obviously not in this direction but it does in this direction and the scribe lines continue now for some of you this will be really handy and you'll really enjoy this for me personally i'm not a huge fan just because i don't i'm just not i don't have a lot of confidence in this action here staying square over time i feel like if i drop this on the ground or something that just over time this one won't be as reliable but definitely a really cool feature to have if you're going to primarily use this speed square in this single direction and if you're only looking to buy one speed square and not a 7 and a 12 inch version you could get away with doing something like this one right here so we're going to start with the most common use of a speed square and that is just creating a square line so by holding the square like this on the board you can draw a straight and square line you can also flip this over and hold it like this that's just preference i actually prefer holding the square like this versus this now another thing that you can do while we're here is you can use this scale across here to basically make multiple lines that are at an exact width apart from each other so for instance this is one two three so i'm going to go an inch and a half over slide the square make another line and this would be a great layout tool for putting a wall stud in place now the cool part is is that if you have a top and bottom plate you can just transfer those lines and that's the reason for the actual length of your speed square that's the reason it is the length it is so that you can draw across two boards the same time which makes layout a breeze so this would be say your top plate and your bottom plate and now they are going to be identical when you flip them over expanding on using the square to make layout lines you can also use these little indentations here as scribe lines so if i turn my board this way for instance i can simply put the square on i can put it on one of these scribe lines which you can line up again with the markings across from here so if i wanted an inch and a half again i could simply do that and i'm going to have an inch and a half line right there which makes layout again just so easy so i can flip this board back i can pull over to three and a half inches make another line and that could be a cut out for a three and a half inch y two by four to get recessed in right there so use your scribe lines but if you actually a little pro tip for you you don't have to use the scribe lines they do make it a lot easier but if you just have a firm grip in hand you can just hold it on the outside and do pretty much the same thing but you will notice that it's not as crisp of a line and nice of a line as this one is over here by having these scribe lines okay let's move beyond 90 degree angles like this one let's say you want a simple 45 degree angle that's really easy all you have to do is turn the square to where the angle section is like this and that makes a 45 degree angle right there but let's say you want a different angle you want to make any angle in this plane well you can actually do that all you have to do is use this part of the square which if we flip it over you'll see it says pivot and we're actually going to use this square as a compass most of these squares are going to say pivot but just know it's this bottom corner right here and all you're going to do is put that back on your line and pivot this until your desired angle is met over here so if i want to do a 15 degree angle i would simply line up 15 degrees it's these outside numbers ignore the inside for now outside numbers 15 degree angle just like that so that measurement there is 15 45. let's say i want to do let's do the other way let's say i want to do a 30 degree angle again just line it up at 30 make your mark now this angle here is 30. so let's say you need to make an angle that's beyond 90 degrees that can also be achieved really easily so let's say you need to make an angle that is 105 degrees well 90 plus 15 equals 105. so if we have a 15 degree line like this one is here then this angle all the way past over here would be 105 degrees super simple so all you have to do is subtract 90 from the total angle that you want go to that number over here make a line and then from here all the way to this edge of the board would be that angle so another really practical use of a speed square is actually to make sure that the blades of your saw are square before you use them so for instance with the circular saw be sure that there is no power source going to the saw you can push the blade guide down like this and then use your other hand to check and make sure that the actual blade is square to the bed of the saw meaning that your cuts are going to be square you can do this with your table saw with a band saw basically any saw you have and it's a good thing to check every now and then that brings me to another great point and that is to actually make sure that the squares you're using are square because what's the point of using them if they're not and a super simple way to do that is just to draw a line on a board like so flip the square over make sure that whatever you're using is actually a straight line and then match that square up that line and make sure that there is no gap if for instance there is a piece of this square which this does happen that got dropped and say this corner got pushed out a little bit that corner being pushed out a little bit would make the square not actually square so there's things that you should check with your square not on a super regular basis but you know every now and then be sure to check and make sure that they're actually square one of the most useful features of a speed square and something that i think the majority of you all will find the most useful of all of these tips is using the speed square as a guide you can use it as a guide for many different tools but the main one that gets used the most is the circular saw so by holding the speed square over your board that you want to cut like this you can actually use it as a guide to make sure that the cut you're making is extremely square on that board it eliminates you from having to use a miter saw or clamping a board down to get a perfect cut and if you have something like this larger 12 inch then you can do really long cuts and make sure they're very accurate and square and it's a lot faster than clamping a board down to use as a guide this also works for jigsaws and many other tools including routers in this section of the video i'm going to be talking about the roofing and framing functions of a speed square and before we get started i wanted to quickly go over the terminology that i'll be discussing in this section i created this little model here it's not perfectly to scale but this will give you a good idea of what the interior of a house structure looks like so starting over here this roof has a 6 12 pitch meaning that for every 12 inches of run this way the roof is going to rise 6 inches that pitch correlates to an angle which is represented right here so the higher this first number is the steeper the roof is going to be a 12 12 pitch would be a 45 degree angle this 6 12 pitch is a 26 and a half degree angle this board here is considered a rafter now this board here is also a rafter and in this example the way these are framed is there is a single ridge that comes this way and every 16 inches one of these rafters would go this way then your plywood sheathing on top of that and then your roofing material on top of that like shingles or tin and that's what creates the roofing structure in your home also on this rafter we have what's called the bird's mouth which is what allows the rafter to actually sit down on top of the two top plates that make up the top portion of your wall this here is a stud inside your wall on top of that stud sits two stacked two by fours and that's what your roof connects down to so we need to be able to cut this bird's mouth so that we can securely fasten the roof rafter down to the wall also on the end of your rafter is going to be your eve cut and this one is not really to scale but basically this needs to be parallel with the wall and then this needs to be perpendicular to the wall so that your eve material can come across here so let's talk about how you create this angle on the end of a rafter now for this we have a 612 pitch and this is really easy to do using a speed square all you're going to do is line up that pivot point again i'm going to flip the board over here just like that and you're just going to tilt until you reach the desired pitch which is labeled here on the inside numbers this is your common pitch numbers here so this would be a 112 pitch 212 pitch 3 and so on and then on the furthest most inside area here this is your hip and valley pitch angles which are a little bit beyond the scope of this video so we're just going to be talking about this common pitch angle all you're going to do for this 612 pitch is pivot over until that six lines up with the edge of your board and as you can see that lines up with the edge that i cut here so that's how you create your pitch angle using a speed square now that we have the pitch cut on our rafter we need to know how to cut this bird's mouth section i'm going to use this piece of wood to replicate this so the first thing i'm going to do is create our roof pitch again which all you have to do is pivot over until we reach that six right there and then make a line now let's assume that all of this is cut and now we need to create this bird's mouth section some quick things to note here the roof pitch angle here is parallel to your bird's mouth angle here and then the top of the bird's mouth is perpendicular to this angle so there are a couple different ways you can do that with a speed square some of which are proprietary to the swanson speed square which is using this diamond to create it and others like using this line that's across the end of both sides that comes on the majority of speed squares that you're going to find so i'll show you both methods now as far as how far down the board goes that just depends on the width of your building but first let's just make this line here the one that is parallel to the roof pitch that's really simple all we need to do is create a line that is parallel to this one so all that entails is again just moving over to the six to create a 6 12 pitch and now we have this line here now we want this section here to only be three and a half inches the reason we only want it to be three and a half inches is so that our top plate sits nicely in there but it doesn't extend past that and we all we want them all to be the same on every rafter the way we get consistency and the way we get it to be exactly three and a half inches is by using this line here or again by using this diamond so i'm going to start by using this line and show you that method so all you're going to do is put that line through the line you've created on your board just make sure that you run straight through there and then you're going to look over here you're going to run this up and down until the 45 degree angle mark intersects the edge of your board again make sure that these are running through this angle and that that 45 is right on the edge when you draw a line you're going to be left with the bird's mouth section which as you can see here is three and a half inches wide and works perfectly now the second way of doing that which is again proprietary to the swans and speed square and this is more preferred in my opinion simply put the pivot point on the side of the board run this up until that diamond intersects your line make sure that it intersects the top and bottom and then once you're there you can make a line you can see that those lines are pretty much right on top of each other and again works to create that bird's mouth all you have to do is use a jigsaw or a hand sole to cut that out and your bird's mouth is created let's continue on and talk about how you can create this eve area of your rafter now again this isn't perfectly to scale so these these would typically be further away from your bird's mouth depending on how long you wanted your eave to be but again notice that this angle here is parallel to the pitch this angle here is perpendicular to the pitch so again we're just creating a bird's mouth except for we're cutting the opposite material away so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start out by creating our pitch here so create our 6 12 pitch line so that now we have a perpendicular line across here and then what i typically do is i would cut this whole piece off and then i would turn my speed square this way and make a line across and that just allows me to have a line that's say more just like an inch or so wide just like maybe that much just to give you enough to attach your eve material to but if you don't want to do it that way you can use the same exact steps that we used prior by using one of these lines or by using the triangle or the sorry the diamond shape here in order to create your thing so if i was to use these lines i could just line it up like this i'm not going to worry about the angle but you would want to pick an angle so that they're all consistent and then draw a line across and now you can cut this area off and this area off and you've created that sort of eve trim detail again these are kind of made specifically for what it is you're wanting to do so this cut here typically is a little bit different oh well this cut here is pretty much always going to be parallel to your roof pitch you can also use your speed square to find the pre-existing pitch of a roof and that's really simple all you're going to do is put this on the side of your roof it doesn't have to be near the top it could be anywhere along the roof then you're just going to simply push this up until your speed square is level typically you would use a smaller speed square than this one but if i get this level here again that would normally be vertical that is a 6 12 pitch because it lines up with the six right here and we know that from the prior example this is a 6 12 pitch roof so that's going to wrap up this video i hope you guys enjoyed it if you'd like to check out some of our projects you can check them out here you can check out another video here and if you haven't already hit the subscribe button also hit that little bell notification so that you actually get notified when a new video comes out like our new build video that's coming out in just a few days that you're not going to want to miss so with that said thank you guys so much for watching and we'll see you in a few days with a new build video

Channel: Woodbrew

Views: 107,290

Keywords: How To Use A Speed Square | The Basics Of Woodworking, How To Use A Speed Square, The Basics Of Woodworking, Woodworking, Woodbrew, 101, Woodworking 101, Speed Square, fast, easy, tool, layout, layout tool, square, protractor, rafter square, roof, roof framing, framing square, carpentry, triangle square, Swanson Speed Square, swanson, DIY, How to get started in woodworking, how to, how to do woodworking, woodwork, how to make things, easy woodworking projects, speed square basics

Id: 6kUPJP-IjkU

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020