Get Right Angles Right With the Best Framing Squares

A framing square can make your life easier than you can imagine. Be it with a carpentry project, a stair stringer, or roofing, precision remains questionable without a professional framing square. If framing square isn't a familiar term, a carpenter's square or an L-square should ring a bell. Scroll down to look at some must-have features in quality and professional-grade framing squares.

What Is a Framing Square?

A typical framing square comes with a thicker and longer blade and a comparatively short and thin tongue. These are the ideal square rulers for sizing up squares and working on rafters and stair stringers.

Are There Square Rulers Other Than Framing Squares?

There is an excellent variety of square rulers on the market. Although all square rulers are L-shaped, they are not all framing squares. Below are the most standard square rulers and their fundamental purposes.

Drywall square

Drywall squares come with a 4-foot-long blade that works excellently as a fence. These squares are used for sizing up and cutting board materials like plywood, drywall, sandal, and more.

Try square

Try squares are also L-shaped and used widely by carpenters for perfecting cabinet squares, corners, and edges. Since these rulers have limited use, woodworkers prefer settling for more versatile options like combination squares.

Speed square

Speed squares are multipurpose tools used ubiquitously in carpentry. These rulers set at 90 degrees are brilliant help with mitering, rafting, and cross-cutting. An added benefit is they can be used as fences when cutting out board material at various angles.

Combination square

Combination squares are tools required during planning a project. They often turn out to be the only scales you need for measuring up long planks, marking up angels, and making drafts for mitering and rabbiting.

Framing Square Uses

Framing squares are multipurpose tools you won’t often find sitting idle in a corner.

Cutting and layout

These products can work as layouts when you’re busy cutting squares, and also as fences when sizing up planks. The square's body and tongue are set at a perfect 90 degrees, making sizing up rabbeted wood pieces, square cuts, and rafting less time-consuming.

Precise measurements

Beyond just cutting and roofing, L-shaped rulers, coupled with a removable fence, can be used as a reference scale for shaping sharp corners and helping determine degrees of flatness.

Essential Factors for Selecting Framing Squares

Although framing squares are versatile and handy tools, you shouldn’t invest in the first one you see. The must-have features of an excellent L-square are extensive and should be reviewed before making a purchase.

The material determines the life of a tool

The ideal material in the vast array of available L-squares is, without a doubt, metal. It’s not a great idea to invest in wooden L-square rulers, using these while working near miter saws and cutters can put scales at risk of cuts and losing shape. Even with metal, there are various options to debate. However, the highest recommendations are given to steel and aluminum for durability and shape retention.

Graduations reflect on your measurements

Graduations are the spaces between each reading of a square’s scale. Graduations vary from scale to scale, and each graduation determines the precision of your work. The most common graduation preferred by carpenters is ⅛ inches. However, there are options offering greater precision as well — for instance, 1/10 inch, 1/12 inch, and more.

Tables and conversions ease up calculations

Calculations causing delay and aggravation in the middle of a project are absolutely infuriating. When dealing with complex calculations, conversions, and tables over a scale surface, keep work rolling by shortening solution times. The Essex board and rafter tables are critical engravings with any framing square.

Body and tongue’s scale outlook

The length of an L-square's body and tongue has everything to do with the nature of your particular work. However, for a beginner, it’s essential to understand the impact of arm physiques on a square ruler’s performance. Thinner scale blades, although possessing great accuracy, are easily displaced under pressure. On the other hand, thicker blades stay in place while also maintaining respectable accuracy.

The Right Way To Read Framing Square Scales

An L-square is a multifaceted tool. Understanding its two basic facets, the face and the back is the first step toward learning a square ruler's application.

Keep the face of the framing square upfront when placing the tongue, directed at the right side. On the face of the L-square, the tongue will have eight square scales inscribed, and the blade will have engraved rafter tables. Now, flipping it over, you’ll find brace readings lined up on the tongue, and Essex board readings engraved on the blade.

To remove any confusion regarding a framing square’s structure, learn to identify the blade, the tongue, and the heel. The heel of an L-square is the point where the two arms meet, forming a vertex. Furthermore, the smaller and thinner arm is called the tongue, while the longer and thicker arm is called the blade.