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Choosing a Speed Square

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Speed Square Mastery: Stop Using It Wrong

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When selecting a speed square, consider your specific needs and the features offered by different brands and sizes. For trim work, a smaller 4.5-inch speed square that fits in a pocket might be ideal. For more complex tasks like rafter layouts, a larger 12-inch or 7-inch model with detailed scales and conversion tables (like the Swanson or Empire) would be more appropriate. The Milwaukee speed square offers features such as stud layout markings and a pipe holder. Some plastic speed squares, like the Harbor Freight one, can even be modified (e.g., cutting off a corner) for specialized tasks like welding. It is recommended to shop around and find a speed square that best suits your work requirements.

Goal: Select the best speed square based on specific project needs

Tools and materials

  • Empire Speed Square Empire — Comparing features and sizes
  • Milwaukee Speed Square Milwaukee — Comparing features and sizes
  • Swanson Speed Square Swanson — Comparing features and sizes

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So say you're going out and you want to buy your first speed square, what are you going to look for? Find the speed square that's going to work best for you. This Milwaukee one was my first speed square ever and yes, it served me well. I've I've done a lot with it and it and it's been fantastic to me and it's got some options on here that the Swanson does not have or the Empire doesn't have, but the Empire also has the common to degree chart on it as where the Milwaukee cut that out for the pipe. If you if you know that you're only going to do trim work, maybe this little 4 and 1/2 is perfect for you. Something you can keep in your pocket, deploy when needed. You only need 4 and 1/2 inches. That might be great for you. Uh if you want to go original and probably honestly the cheapest one, I picked this one up the other day for $14 at Ace Hardware here in town. It didn't just come with the speed square, but it came with a little book on how to use the speed square as well as this convenient belt clip. So, there are many different options out there. This one from Harbor Freight has been fantastic as well. I like these plastic ones for one thing and I haven't done it here in my shop, but we have a plastic one at work and we went ahead and we cut the corner off for when we weld, we can get it right up in there and uh our weld bead goes right through here and it [snorts] and it works perfectly for us at work. Um yeah, just go ahead and shop around, figure out what you really want and what you need. If you're going to do a lot of scribing and you're going to do maybe some all around handyman stuff where you want to cut the pipe and you want to your stud layout and your your 3 and 1/2 and your 5 and 1/2 top plates, um maybe go with the Milwaukee or Empire maybe a little bit cheaper than Milwaukee. You get your conversion. You guys get what I'm saying here. Shop around, figure out what you want and what's going to work the best for you. And if you have any comments or if you have any problems, drop it in the comment below. I'll answer it the best I can. Now with all that being said, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to drop a couple options for speed squares down below. I'm also looking for ideas for the channel, right? Like I'm going to redo the garage this summer and and I got some a smoker build I want to do and and just some other stuff that I want to do this summer. So, if you guys want to see anything, go ahead and again, drop a comment down below. Whatever…

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