Give A Framing Square The Edge

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A framing square can be useful for laying out large panels, but its lack of a shoulder makes it difficult to register a leg accurately against the edge of the workpiece. Sure, you can retract the square enough to drop the inside edge of the lower leg against the workpiece edge, but that raises one edge of the other leg off the workpiece, compromising layout accuracy. It also shortens the reach of the square.

My simple fix is to pinch the stock (the body) of a try square against the framing square leg as I’m placing both against the workpiece edge. Obviously, the longer the try square stock, the better, but even the head on a 12ʺ combination square provides plenty of registration as long as you pinch the two squares together tightly.

—Alejandro Balbis, Longueuil, Quebec