Aluminium Try Square (250)

That job is more important than it sounds, because squareness compounds. A cabinet whose sides are a degree out will not close up at the corners; a frame that is out of square racks and will not sit flat; a cut that is not square leaves a joint with a gap that no amount of glue hides. Almost every problem in assembly traces back to something that was not square when it was cut.

The tool is a blade fixed permanently at ninety degrees to a stock, and you use it two ways. Held with the stock against the edge of a workpiece, the blade marks a line square across it for cutting. Held against two surfaces of an assembly, it shows whether they meet at a right angle — and light showing between the blade and the surface tells you by how much.

At 250mm this is the mid-size try square: long enough for boards, frames, carcase sides and general joinery, short enough to be handy and to fit inside an assembly.

The construction is high quality aluminium stock. Aluminium keeps it light — a square gets picked up hundreds of times a day — and it does not rust, which matters for a tool whose accuracy lives in a machined right angle that corrosion would eat away at.

The buyers are carpenters and joiners, cabinet and furniture makers, shopfitters, DIY and household users, technical training workshops, and hardware dealers supplying woodworking trades.

The habit that matters most is checking the square itself, and it takes thirty seconds. Hold the stock against a known straight edge and draw a line along the blade. Then flip the square over, line the stock up on the same edge at the same point, and draw a second line. If the square is true the two lines fall on top of each other. If it is out, they diverge — and they diverge by twice the error, which makes the test very sensitive. Do this when you buy it and after any drop, because a square that has been knocked out of true will confidently make every piece in a job wrong in the same direction. Message us on WhatsApp for a price, or for the 300mm and 400mm.