- Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the shop.
Today is an introduction to the speed square.
And in this video
I'm gonna show you the five most common uses for this
so that you can put this thing to work for you today.
The speed square is one of the most important tools
that you'll ever buy
because it's the tool that's used the most often,
almost on any carpentry project.
So let's just dive in right now
and I'm gonna show you the first
of the five things that are the most common,
starting with using it as a square.
So it's great for checking square
at the end of a cut, like this.
You can do it on finished material like this
or studs or any framing materials as well to check that.
It's also great if you're joining pieces
of material together like this,
where you wanna make sure that this piece here
is exactly 90 to the connecting piece, like this.
The other thing it's really good for too,
is you can use it for squaring up a small stud wall
or any sort of framing that's coming off of a flat surface.
So for here, you can actually see
that this is actually not 90 to the table
and then see that gap.
It would have to be installed something like this.
And second it's used as a ruler and a marking tool,
because if you look at it, it actually has a ruler
on this side up to a seven inches
and it has up to four inches on this side.
So you can measure some small things with it.
But it's really awesome for marking though
nineties for 90 cuts.
It's also great for marking 45s like this.
It's great for making repetitive markings for cuts.
So if I needed a bunch of one inch lines from this point,
I can line this up like this
and then go out to the one, two, three, and so on.
And then all I have to do is line these up
and make these cuts like this, so I have consistency there.
And it's also good for drawing long lines.
So if I wanted a one inch line down through here,
I would just line this up on the board
and then put my marker, my pencil down on the one inch mark
and then drag drag, drag this out like this.
So I could do that at the two inch mark, like this.
It's really just universal on what it can do.
The third way to use this tool, is actually as a protractor
for finding different angles for different cuts.
So if you look at the square itself,
there is a word that says pivot with an arrow.
This is the pivot point of this tool
and at the bottom there's degrees,
and it goes from zero, of course, all the way to 90.
So if I'm looking to make a 10 degree cut,
all I have to do is line up the speed square
with the top of the material.
Using the pivot point now, I am gonna swing this
to 10 degrees.
So my pivot point is on the top, my 10 degree mark here,
is also on the top edge of the board.
So there's 10 degrees, I draw a line.
Now I know when I cut this, it's a 10 degree angle.
You can obviously do this for anything up to 90.
So if you want to do the 45 this way,
instead of the other way I showed you
that works just as well.
There's the pivot point lined up to 45 degrees.
And if you check it, there it is, perfect every time.
So this is fantastic for finding various angles
for different types of cuts.
They fourth way to use this tool is a layout tool.
So for here, for laying out studs
and next I'll show laying out for rafters.
So this is very easy.
If this is a stud wall and I'm having
a bunch of vertical studs running up
and I want to lay them out,
I can easily put the speed square on the end,
mark an inch and a half,
because I know that's the thickness of a stud,
draw my line and make an X,
so I know that's the position of the stud.
So if I want another one here, simply I can draw,
move over an inch and a half, make an X.
It's great for laying out all the way down stud walls
and then transferring to another plate.
And it's very simple as well,
because then you could just line up your existing marks,
sorry, that was a little sloppy and make your Xs.
Now your marks are transferred onto something else.
The next way for laying out is like I said, for rafters.
So let's go look at that now.
So here's a basic layout of a rafter.
Now don't be freaked out.
I know we haven't really got into this training yet.
We'll get there for this, but for simplicity
this is a basic layout.
You have a stud, a double top plate on traditional framing,
a ridge, and then you have two rafters here
that come together.
Now I have not cut out the bird's mouth here on this side.
I'm gonna show you how to do that with the speed square.
So, in order to find this angle and to make this cut,
we have to use a different part of the speed square.
We're gonna accomplish that by using the pivot
which we already discussed.
And instead of using the bottom degrees,
we're gonna use the next line up, which is labeled common.
This is a common rafter.
So in order to get the ridge cut up here
and the heel cut of the bird's mouth,
we're actually gonna use the same technique we did
with using it as a protractor.
We gonna set of pivot point, and in this case,
I just randomly chose an 8-12 pitch.
So we're gonna line up to the eight mark again,
not paying attention to the degrees,
but paying attention to the common marks.
So I basically line this up at the pivot,
pivot it all the way to eight and drew a line.
So that now is an 8-12 pitch.
I then did the same thing down here,
pivoted over at the eight mark
to get the heel of the bird's mouth cut.
Then to make the seat cut,
generally what happens is whatever your stud is,
it's gonna be the same thickness.
So, or I should say same width, so three and a half inches.
So what you do to find that, is you simply use your square
and come up until you're at the three and a half mark.
And then I would draw this line and then this gets cut out.
So this is the same angle, this is the same angle.
And then eventually the soffit will get cut out.
As you can see, I have a dotted line,
this is the same angle as well.
It's actually a plumb line, so when this thing's assembled,
this is exactly plumbed.
The ridge is plumb and everything is plumb up to there.
So let me just show you what this looks like on this side.
So for instance, I got a tape measure here.
We're gonna pull this down and I'm gonna measure
from the bottom line here to the bottom line
of the heel cut and it's about nine and a half inches.
So what I've done is, I went over here
and I drew a little tick mark
with my marker here at nine and a half.
So we're gonna do then, first make our plumb cut.
And so we're gonna pivot at our pivot point
and swing over to the eight and line up
that little tick mark that we made to draw our plumb line.
Next up, I use this part of the speed square
and I run this up until I get to my three and a half mark.
And then as long as I'm lined up here,
three and a half there, I can draw a line across like this.
And lastly, number five, it's used as a saw guide.
Here simply slide the speed square up
to the shoe of the saw,
line up the saws blade with your marked pencil line
and push the saw slowly through the material,
trying to keep the shoe tight up against the speed square.
(saw blade cutting)
And there you have it.
So those are the five most common uses for this tool,
in my opinion, of course.
There are many other things that this thing can do
but my hope is for you just to feel more confident now
to put this tool to use today.
If you're on our website, watching this video,
understand we do offer free mentorship programs.
So if that's something that you're interested in,
go check that out today.
It's on our homepage.
If you're on YouTube and you have some questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
Thanks for watching.
Be well, stay safe.
See you in the next one.
(upbeat music)