Speed Square Top 5 PRO Tips

every morning mrs. W and I have a ritual morning ritual we go through this pretty much goes something like this we wake up I start the fire in the wood stove she starts the coffee we sit together on the couch with our computer and go through and answer and read a lot of the comments from the previous day's video she looked at me first thing this morning and said if you don't get back to the 10 most important tools tool belt tools the the video list there's going to be a full-fledged revolt so today we're going to hit number two of the most important tools that every man needs to have in his tool belt by your request hands down the most requested the speed square so the speed square is one of those things that that I just couldn't live without one of the most important tools that I own app I just can't say enough about it how should it be worn how should it be oriented well if your right hand now this is just for me some guys have different opinions the speed square pencil tape measure combination or something is going to be personal preference this is just my preference is maybe not the best it maybe not be the fastest but I'm not a production carpenter and I tend to want to kind of defaults on the accuracy side because I have a little bit more time in my leisure so the speed square should be worn if you're right-handed on your left that's typically and when you're buying tool belts don't buy a tool belt that doesn't have a dedicated place for for a speed square this the Occidental's here make just perfect use of a space that just wouldn't be usable it simply by stitching the bags together and leather lining this for durability and that speed square fits in there and it never falls out problem with the speed square if you have a tool belt inferior brand that doesn't have a dedicated pocket for it it's always falling out on the ground that's bad for the square it's bad for your patience when you're up on a ladder and that happens and you need it so when you're buying a tool belt make sure you source it some people prefer to have their pencil I've seen this right here that these two tools work hand in hand you grab your pencil you grab your speed square you have everything that you need to do your marking however you have this for me and we're being right handed after switch hands and then I don't I don't like that method plus having tools it sticks out like this even that level is going to catch on everything your tool your extension cords on your skill saws are going to catch in here when you're if you're a plumber if you're crawling through trusses and joyce's it's going to catch so having anything here when I get in situation like that I remove it I want to go fast attack fast and light and not having that stuff that's going to hang up on me but if you're just doing layout if you're working at the chop saw and you're cutting for other other framers then that's fine you can grab both of these really quickly although no what you do have to change hands so what I prefer is to have my pencil here on this side close in or it's protected it's protected in there and it's never going to get broken off I've got my tape measure here so when I cut there's three tools that I use is I'm going to lay my let me show you let me show you my cutting technique okay you got to cut a board here is how I do it if you want to be accurate and inefficient I'll tell you what if you're a young guy if you're going to be signing on what working into construction one of the first jobs you're going to be given you're going to be the board cutter right after you're the cleanup guy or the tool fetcher you're going to be the board cutter and you need to be able to do a couple things you need to be able to read a tape measure and you need to be able to cut square boards to the proper length I mean I haven't helped the guy that's down the ground and start setting studs and and headers and things up there that have to come back down and be recut you do not want to be that guy so one way to be really accurate is this you take your speed square out out of your tool belt first thing you do is you lay it down this is a two by six let's say we're going to cut this a stud or whatever take my tape measure throw that out there hook it on the edge lay it down and lock it all of that motion is very quick so having my tool belt set up the way that I can I walk up to the board I put it down I got two hands speed square tape measure comes out it lays down I lock it a good tape measure like this with a rubber bottom is nice because you don't have to lock it and it won't slide so there it is so if I want to make my cut here I've got my tape measure I simply run my square up to exactly what the measurement is going to be so for example say we're going to cut off or footboard right I simply because my speed squared underneath I slide it up not to the four inches or the four feet because if I mark on the forefoot with the pencil line the pencil has a thickness right it's going to be too big so you want to come back you know these lines are sixteenth of an inch so when I'm laying this out I'll come back so if I'm going to cut four I'm going to come back between the fifteen sixteenths and the four halfway and that if I keep my pencil sharp and I know how thick it is he's going to once I make that mark it's going to be perfectly placed exactly where I want it so the speed square is got these nice grooves in it you simply put your fingers in there pull it tight make a mark it's going to be absolutely perfect every time so here's how it looks in real time this is this is a really quick efficient way to do it I walk up I put my speed square down I throw my tape measure out I lay it down grab my pencil I bring it up is that it's easy I can see it exactly where it's at my speed square is marking my spot hold it pull it in put my tools away I'm ready to make my cut perfect cuts every time it's very fast it's very efficient it's very consistent so there is a myriad of uses for the speed square I'm just going to cover the top five the most popular ways the guys use them we're not going to get into hips and valleys and Raptor Raptor measurements you can do all of those things figuring roof pitches with it for most of us we're simply going to use it for these five basic functions and the first is being a simple square having a way a pocket reference that we can check everything immediately for square the ends of boards you know when you buy lumber from it's better than it used to be but they're not always square so if you have this out that's an eighth or three sixteenths or so your cuts are going to be wrong they're not going to be right so good to get a good practice to see right there here's a factory cut and it's a sixteenth off I can know that really quickly by using my speed square so just having a regular 90 degree square for squaring up other things as well how about your skill saw table squaring up the fences and tables on your power tools is something that you should do before you start your work date because the factory stops are not always accurate the factory measurements I mean tools get dropped in tool boxes and and stepped on and dropped and all those things come out of whack take a screw or a 16-pin email and pin that guard back make sure it's unplugged obviously but what we're trying to do is you know that these what this this is all the same for a table saw or for a skill saw or for a jigsaw or any of the saws that you have ouch he does it to me every time lost some hide there so this here enables us to make miter cuts right same with our table socks after the blade turn so what we can do having this quick reference that we know is absolutely right is to lay that on there and just double check that our tools are cutting square now be careful with your blades because there's a curve on these carbide tips they're a little bit wider so that the body of the saw blade doesn't get caught in the kerf you don't want to be measuring on top of one of those bumps you want to come in between the teeth the cutting teeth and right there I can see that this is actually quite a bit off when we're using the stops so here's our tool whatever it is with a tilting house right bring it back to the stop our speed score we run it up between the teeth see there see how it's making contact there at the bottom but not the top that tells us that our saw is not going to cut properly so by rotating this down and continue to check it till we're perfectly square now we can lock down the tool and know that we are going to be making perfect 90-degree cuts goodness we're still on number one we still got four more to go I want to show you a couple things here though another use and we're still on this using the square aspect of the square why it's so useful so let's say we're laying out our studs right we're on a sixteen inch center all right so remember when you do your layouts you always put an X on one side and you know that your stead falls to that side of it we'll talk more about layouts we come to tape measure so right there is where stud needs to go right right there on that line alright so let's say we're using a nail gun or screw gun or whatever we stick one side of it well always will inevitably that's this thing is going to turn and it's hard to see especially if you're working in darker areas so what I typically do is I'll nail one side of the stud and then I'll bring throw my speed square down and I can simply rotate this until it's perfectly 90 now you know some guys don't worry about it it's a it's it's maybe a step they say time-wasting step but I like to do the best I can when I walk away from it I want the framing to be as good as I can do it so you can see there I've seen studs nailed in like that not really throws a problem for guys in the future because what you're doing when you're cutting quarters and you're doing shoddy work especially starting with the foundation guys is you're passing along your act the aggravations and your shoddy work is making other guy's life miserable because when you start doing this now the drywallers are coming and they're you're counting on everything being 16 inch centers and because you were lazy and you did poor work it makes that poor guy's job just that much more difficult all the way onto the finish carpenters and don't even get me started with that so just taking a moment like that putting your screw in bringing that up there making sure that it's nice and done properly is just it's a step that just takes a second and I think it's just good style this second not in a particular order and one of the more useful things that you're going to use the speeds wear for is as a what do you call it a protractor a protractor so you need to figure an angle Oh automatically you have the 45s on there if you want to do miters or different things but right here is a pivot point it says pivot right on it and as you rotate this holding for this pivot point fast to the edge there's degrees over here so if I want to make a 5 degree cut I simply roll up until I'm excelling the number 5 on there and make a line and there's what there's my 5 degrees or if I want to do a 22 and a half I bring it up here make my mark and now I'm at 22.5 all the way up I can go clear on up you know of course to the 90 degrees and I could use that as a protractor to figure all of my angles very useful for all sorts of things especially when you're doing miters so the number three of the top uses for your speed square is going to be as a saw guide what does it mean what I mean by a saw guide so our skill saw right as we're running it through the board and following a line have a tendency to do this and the and the more the more skilled you are the more you do this the better you get at it guys that are occasional users like myself having a little assistance or as something to run along is of great benefit now it's not such a big deal if we're just cutting cutting a 90-degree cut off of the board where it's just we're just cutting it to length if it's not perfect as a stunt it's not the end of the world however when we start doing miters and we're going to have to cut to pieces they're going to fit together then it's critical that this cut be absolutely straight so the skill saws whether it be a worm drive like this or a circular are going to have this base plate this or table they're going to call it that's flat this one here is got a nice flat magnesium table that's very similar and in running length to the speed square so I can pull my speed square and I'm going to make that cut make the mark out of here and by pressing it firmly and getting my fingers I get my fingers even if I can get them on the inside of these cut outs here pushing lots of pressure I do not want this to move I'll put this on my mark line up my blade and then when I'm ready to make my cut I'll turn this in make sure that I'm sitting apart against my fence and I'll run that through there using that as a straight edge as a guide to make a perfect cut before we do that I want to share a story a little talk a little bit about pinning guards back so skill saws like this have a guard right here if I take the screw out that we just right there now this guard comes closed right it shuts down so when I'm through with my cut it automatically comes down so when I sit the saw down it or it's brushes on my leg or or anything that guard covers it the saw is not going to take off and do something stupid and it's always there and it's actually four guards go as far as guards go it's a pretty good one it's one you can live with but there are times when is it unhandy and you can't cut very well with it that's why it's got a handle on it so especially let's say when we're cutting cutting rafter tails overhead we'll hold that guard back like here and make those cuts and then release it when you're done cutting so back in the day I used to work with some framing crews and we would pin the guards back with a nail like this this is a big no-no and I'll tell you why what happened to a cousin of mine that did this very thing and almost lost his life from it so the reason why see you pin your guards back in and now you can cut and cut and cut keep both hands on the saw you don't have to worry about fool around with the guard I get that I bought I've done that myself but what he was doing was he was cut rafter tails it was cutting and cutting moving over he's working with his brother and he just caught one and when you release the trigger you know the saw is still spooling down and the blade is still turning big jagged teeth on it he made his cut he brought his saw down like that right when his brother was walking up behind him to get his attention putting his hand on his shoulder and he dropped this blade unguarded right on his brother's thigh as that was spooling down and you can imagine you look at the teeth what that would do to human flesh and spinning slow like that it makes it even worse I mean it's like a chainsaw injury terrible so if you're tempted to to pin your guards back like that just be really careful with it I know that in the real world sometimes it happens but very very dangerous so this will demonstrate how important it is to have that speed square as a saw guide on these miters so I've got my sauce at there at an angle let's say we're going to cut a miter right we're going to do some sort of a pattern I want to make sure that I'm hard-and-fast up against the fence holding it securely now I can make my straight cut now if we check our miter now because we use the speed square as a guide and we use that as a nice straight edge for our saw we've got a very clean very tight miter right there I mean we're not talking about finished carpentry here but this would be really something considered to be done very well very properly in your framing or your basic construction there and if we check it there with our speed square of course you know we're absolutely square so a great great trick just that in itself so the number four useful thing for speed square the most commonly used things now I got to preface this this particular speed square is not one that I'd recommend this one is made by Empire this is not the original Swanson speed square if you're going to buy a speed square speaking of which would be a great gift for your for your loved ones I'm going to put these in my Amazon store Wrangler Mart com Wrangler Mart com all see if I can't locate the proper Swanson version I don't know why I got this I would imagine that I needed one and that's what was available at Home Depot or wherever I was at at the time but the Swanson's here what we're going to do here is is we're going to use a speed square for marking lines here let's say that we want to cut a strip off of a sheet of plywood and or we want to cut this in half or we want a two-inch furring strip off of this right here on the edge we can see the graduated numbers we go from 1 to 6 right there what you can do is you if let's say we want to cut this two-and-a-half we'll go to the two and a half mark right there putting our pencil in there now make sure when you are pencil that we're laying it away from the body we want to go this way because the pencil jumps and jabs and sticks into every deformity in the wood but laying it down towards us and they're guessing as best we can with our finger on the square so it doesn't move I can run down the full length of a sheet of plywood or two by or whatever making that line marking perfectly off that factory edge that strip that I want now why I like the Swanson so much better than the empire's is that they have an area that's cut out and it's got to believe quarter inch increments with little divots in it that you can actually slip your pencil into so your pencil rides in there you don't have to do this hold it on the outside nonsense you can simply just put it right in there and it's a wonderful way so just to have the ability to quickly mark off streets strips for sheet goods for cutting framing members whatever you want is a great great trick you know I thought I had five things I wanted to talk about I don't know where the fifth one maybe I covered it already one last thing that I use it for is on pony wall straightening the studs and pony walls really small stuff tiny tiny stuff where you can't get your four foot level this is not something you'd want to do on a full stud well you always want to use your level when you can but sometimes let's say you're just building a little wall that needs to fit up underneath something you know we've got a step wall we'll just pretend this is our top plate right and we are layouts on the bottom and or we haven't done the layout on the top or whatever and we don't know how do you know if this this little stud is sitting if it's plumb or not the speed square is great for that on that little wall I'll secure the bottom make sure that I'm on layout and then I'll just quickly check right here and if I'm not tap tap it over with my hammer I check it here I check it here I scored both sides really quickly really efficiently and it fits in really tiny areas also it may be better depends on the application to use a small torpedo level if that fits as well the kind of both do the same thing but it's a little bit more guesswork with a level it's kind of open to interpretation where the speed square is absolutely definitive interesting side note my father has houseboat mortgages several of them and growing up we built did a lot of remodeling and did a lot of building of house boats and house boat rafts the interesting thing about house boats because it was they were on a river and the river has a slight tilt to it you can't use a level because the level you'll build crooked so everything when you're building has to be done with a square kind of a just something you don't think about when building something on an uneven surface you always think that the level is the as the absolute definitive answer but not always so remember some time back we used to show strange tools that I didn't know what they were to try to see hold kind of a contest to see who could identify one my new friend is subscriber Kari from Georgia set two planes one the other one I'll be featuring a future video but this one in particular was really stumping me I had no idea what it was let's see if you know what this thing is it's a plane with a small wooden handle on it you can see that it's got a thumb screw on it it's got a rotating it's a little bit rusty but the head rotates so it's to follow something or some sort of an uneven uneven wood or whatever it's got a real traditional planer blade that it screwed you know there's no micro or find adjustments for it it's got a really big throat so that tells us also that it's not something that was really intended for precision work but to take a lot of wood quickly now when he sent this he said I have no idea what this is I've looked all over I can't figure it out but I thought was interesting and I'm sending to you maybe you can use it or find out what it's for and then right after it arrived he FET he figured it out and it sent me a link to what it was and I would have never guessed it not in a million years what this was for I believe that they were made by Stanley I don't know if this particular one was I can't find a lot of markings on it but I haven't looked really close but let me know in the comments if you have any idea what this is I know what it is it all announced it in the next video or so but see if see how smart see who the smarty is if you can figure out what this is and what it was intended for originally so that's it that's the bonus footage so we'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 1,511,887

Rating: 4.6924353 out of 5

Keywords: speedsquare, how to use a speedsquare for angles, how to use a speedsquare for stairs, hot to use a speed square to cut rafters, how to use a speedsquare to find angles, how to use a speed square for roof pitch, hot to use a speedsquare pdf, how to use a speedsquare for rafters, how to use a speedsquare hip, valley, swanson speedsquare, mean square speed, root mean square, swanson speed square, best speed square, framing square, wranglerstar

Id: W0mfmRAWymU

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2015