Cutting a birds mouth for a 2x4 top plate using a speed square! #diy #tools #home #construction

So I got a comment the other day, somebody's like, "Hey man, show how to do a bird's mouth cut with a speed square." So let's get after it. All right, so if you don't know what a bird's mouth is, basically it's a V-shape notch in your rafter that allows your rafter to sit securely on your top plate of your wall. So basically what you're going to want to do is take your speed square and right here this common scale, this is going to show you the pitch of your roof. So we established a couple videos ago that my roof pitch on my garage is a 4 12. So you're going to bring this all the way up to where it says four, all right? And I'm doing this at a weird angle so you guys can hopefully see it. So you bring this up to where it's four and remember you trace the outside of your square here. And now you're going to have three diamonds on your square. You're going to have one, this one at an inch and a half, three and a half, and five and a half. The inch and a half is for your layout, three and a half and your five and a half are for your top plates for this exact use. So now you've established your roof pitch and this would also work for a rafter tail. I can make a separate video on that, but this will work for rafter tail. So go ahead and line up the diamond on your three and a half right with your line. Like like so, right? Three and a half is the width of a 2 by 4. Make sure your pivot point is in place and make sure that your three and a half is right on your line and go ahead and mark the outside. Now you're going to want to cut this out. So let's cut this out and I'll come back. All right, now let's imagine that this is the top plate of your wall, right? You have your wall, this is your 2 by 4 top plate, this is your rafter. It's going to sit just like that. See how it's notched here and it's like this? Then you go ahead and this would run all the way up and you could put the same angle right here and you'd cut your 4 12 from here down and you'd put your fascia board on and you'd be good to go. So, that's how you cut a bird's mouth for a 4 12 pitch. You can do it for any pitch the same exact way and I'll go over rafter tails tomorrow. I said that I was going to release a full video of pretty much everything a speed square can do. I lost track of time this week. I looked over some footage. I didn't like it. I want to put out a quality video for you guys. So, I'm going to try to work on it tomorrow and we'll drop it this weekend. All right. Y'all have a good night. Peace.