Skill Square XT - Aluminum Handle

Those of us that came to woodworking through remodeling probably cut our teeth on a carpenter’s square. It’s been a fixture in professional and amateur tool belts for close to a hundred years. But, when you transition from remodeler to furnituremaker, the carpenter’s square loses some of its luster. The thick, stamped blade and fat graduations just don’t deliver the accuracy you need for furniture and cabinet work. The SkillSquare, merges the features of the traditional carpenter’s square with Woodpeckers tradition of precision-machined one-piece stainless steel blades and aluminum beams. Now you can have a square that’s just as handy in the cabinet shop as it is when you’re laying out a partition or cutting a rafter.

Woodpeckers laser-cut the SkillSquare blade from 1/16" stainless steel plate, then machine the edges on CNC mills to a tolerance of .0085°. At one-third the thickness of other carpenter’s squares, parallax viewing error is reduced and measurements transfer to your material more precisely. The laser-engraved scale is graduated in sixteenths, not eighths, and the graduations are crisp, dark, easy to read and will never wear off.

Woodpeckers created two sets of scribing guides in the SkillSquare. When you’re working with construction lumber and a carpenter’s pencil, there are large scribing guides on quarter-inch centers to 3". For finer work, there are scribing guides on eighth-inch centers along the entire blade. Each of the finer guides has two triangular notches so you can mark with either a push or a pull. The triangle guides accommodate a wide variety of marking devices, from wooden and mechanical pencils to scratch awls and permanent markers.

They even improved performance in angle marking. The pivot point on the SkillSquare is sharp and well-defined, making rafter and angle marking more precise and more repeatable. The beam of the SkillSquare is 3/4" thick and 1" wide with chamfers in the middle. It’s easy to position on your material and comfortable to use all day.