Acurate graduated set square

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Philw

Established Member
Joined
30 Jun 2021
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46
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Location
Nottingham
Can anyone recommend an acurate set square on a budget if possible. If it’s graduated that’s even better!
 
You might have to flesh out your request a little as 'set square' covers a lot of possibilities. Put the term into Google and see the variety of objects that come up.

To me, a set square is (one of two shapes of) a plastic triangle I used in geometry class at school and later on for making technical drawings. Your definition and requirement might be different...
 
Yes apologies it’s a woodworking engineers square, preferably with metric graduation. I have been reading into it and it seems fairly straight forward if I buy a BS939(B) or DIN875 marked engineers square it should be spot on. To which the axminster or Fisher engineers squares are well priced.
 
...DIN875 marked engineer's square...

DIN 875 is only the general standard. Just like BS939, where (B) is the lowest level of accuracy, the DIN has four classes, 00, 0, 1 and 2. The lower the number the higher the accuracy.
 
For a little more than £5 I may just dare to try one. I want a decent engineers square to check them against however. I’ve 4 try squares and none of them match up.
 
I have 3 lovely wood and brass Marples squares, 6", 9" and 12", they look great mounted on the tool wall in ascending order but thing is they aren't square so absolutely useless, I now use a couple of engineering squares I got from Axminster which are spot on.

I remember a year or so ago a few people on here getting the Starret squares and think there was mixed feedback, most were positive but there were some negative.

A square just needs to be square, doesn't matter what you pay for it but I expect if I pay more there will be more chance it should be square, if you are going cheap it's best to go into a shop where you can check it before you buy it.


If woodworking then you do not need to buy an extremely accurate square because the wood movement could be greater .

You need a square to be accurate, I expect to be able to flip a square and the lines I mark be parallel in it's length.
 
I have a few cheap Starrett squares, genuine Starrett items but made inexpensively and more importantly are square! They decided to avoid being ripped off by cheap chinese imitations, they'd simply put a cheap range to market and control quality to maintain reputation and have succeeded. I have some Bacho mitre squares too which are a little crude but do the job and as with most mitre squares can have the little internal nibs filed to get them bang-on very easily. I keep a jewellers file in the workshop for doing just that.
 
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