How to use a speed square | Why it might be the most important tool you own

welcome to our YouTube channel where we share our building wisdom or lack thereof with you on today's episode we're going to be solving the mysteries of the speed square I emphasize how important of a tool this is to have in your tool belt it's so important that I actually have a backup and it's not a great one but it's a spare just in case something happens so whether you're the cut man whether you're the layout man whether you're the guy installing you need to check whether stuff is Square to your plates you got to have one of these in your belts and if you don't you're almost worthless in fact if you only had these four items in your tool belt you could do most carpentry jobs no problem hammer pencil tape measure speed square well and now see next in order I would go utility knife a chalk line the must that's off and so let's start with the things that people do know about a speed square most commonly okay number one is you can hook it on a board like that pull it tight and you can make a perpendicular line to the board and you can cut it that's number one the second thing that most people already know is that it has a tape measure on it so say I wanted to mark a stud layout I would put that on that mark and Mark an inch and a half and draw another line and there's a stud layout boom most people know that it's also a new accident that a speed square measure is about seven inches across the top in fact I hear more about seven and eight that's because two by fours are three and a half inches fine across two of them is seven inches if they're spaced out a little bit like they are here seven and an eight when you're doing your layout so you're doing 16 on the center we're gonna mark three quarters either side a 16 inch increments stud and I want to lay this out across both plates and actually you want to make sure the ends of your plates are flush like that before you do that and so strike our lines for our layout now we'll go all the way across nice and easy with our seven inch speed square okay so let's dive into number one of lesser known things that this speed square will do number one on that list would be the scribe feature on a speed square now these little notches right here are indicator marks for eighth inches on your square tape measure so we're gonna pick the one that's an inch and a half which would be right there and if you hold your square tight and pull it like that you will get a line that is exactly an inch and a half from this edge of the board so these things also make awesome throwing stars do you think you're a ninja get start with one of these don't mess with the man with the speed squared okay we're gonna look at measuring degrees with your speed square this has a pivot point which is this corner right here usually has a little a little notch in it a little see that little notch missing that's your that's your pivot point we're gonna hook that on the edge of the board and we will spin the square out and if you want to pick a degree we're gonna pick 40 degrees right there see that 40 degrees you'll line it up with this edge of the board same edge as your pivot point sucked on and you can now draw a line and that's a 40 degree line in relation to this edge of the board now let's get into some rafter cuts with this speed square using this pivot point the same as we did before let's turn this out here to where it says six on the common and say common top cuts and this would be the say the top end of a rafter where it butts into the girder and so this would be a six on 12 pitch so we're gonna mark that and that would be cut right here and that would make the top edge of your rafter that's your common top cuts now we're gonna pretend that this rafter needs to be cut on a 10 12 so we're gonna do the same thing pivot till we see 10 on your common right here and we're gonna draw the line keeping this pivot tight and that is a 1012 top cut on your common scale and of course if you want a 45 degree angle or a 12 12 pitch would be the same thing you just hook this thing flat and Mark the long edge and that's a 45 degree angle and that's a 1012 now we're gonna look at this hip valley top cut scale right here now this is for the top end of a hip rafter and so what we're doing right now would be this top cut where it butts in to whatever it butts into okay so for the hip Valley cuts it works much in the same way you're gonna rotate on this pivot point and if we have a 1012 common rafter we're going to go to the 1012 on the hip Valley and that's gonna make the top cut for our hip Valley rafter described that line of course you just have to extend it on out to the end of the board this works well for that as well and now you can cut that and that's the right angle for your top cut on your hip Valley this dotted line right here is used to do your seat cuts which also called a bird mouth and that's where your rafter sits on top of a wall plate and so let's do a mock up here let's pretend the rafter tail is this end of the board and I know the measurement to the outside of the wall plate on the bottom edge of this rafter so I'm gonna mark that point and say this is a 712 pitch rafter so we're gonna mark on seven and I've drawn a line here and it can be long it doesn't matter and that's the vertical line of this bird's mouth when we're setting the rafter now we're going to use this seat cut feature we're going to line up this dotted line with the line we just made you can see how that lines up and make a line back across here now that's a bird's mouth for a 712 pitch on a three and a half inch wall and actually your wall plate is going to be right there so another way I commonly use my speed square is to flush boards on top or bottom and that would be using it in this manner to make sure I'm gonna depend on nail to boards together if they're flush and not slightly offset like that bump he'll fight nail it speed square board you don't have to draw a line just give yourself a nice straight edge looks good you're square to run the base of your saw on it make sure your fingers are out the way guys don't hold your square like this hold it way out here and that's actually the better place to hold it in anyway do not hold it there right here fingers way away sometimes you have to remember the measurements of a lot of boards and then walk to a cut station cut them that's when the speed square comes into play if I need to cut a bore 101 and a half I'll just write it on here I need one 102 and 8 I write it on here and when you're done with them little lick and they're gone ready to go again so that's a really uncommon use but I do that all the time so don't forget stuff between where I'm working in the cut station okay so I know that my speed square is 3/16 of an inch that if I'm studying windows or doing something where I know I need a three sixteenths Jim I also use it for that that's great for that [Music] and if you guys are real smart you'll ignore everything I just said and look at the booklet that comes with your speed square but that requires reading and watching videos is way more fun [Music]

Channel: Perkins Builder Brothers

Views: 650,660

Rating: 4.891901 out of 5

Keywords: learn, build, cut, rafters

Id: xa9HZQV0W-Q

Length: 7min 34sec (454 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019