Miter square

Miter square
	A mitre square with a wooden stock, a steel blade, and brass rivets
Other names	Mitre square
Classification	Hand tool; Square (tool);
Used with	Pens, pencils, marking knives
Related	Square (tool)

A miter square or mitre square is a hand tool used in woodworking and metalworking for marking and checking angles other than 90°. Most miter squares are for marking and checking 45° angles and its supplementary angle, 135°.^[1]^[2]

A miter is a bevelled edge – usually 45° – used, for example, for making miter joints for woodworking.^[2] Squares are tools designed for marking and checking specific fixed angles, usually 90° or 45°, though most squares are exclusively for working with 90° angles.

Description

As with 90° squares, there are many different types of miter square. Miter squares are usually made from two fixed parts, a stock and a blade (sometimes called a tongue).

The blade on a modern factory-made miter square is typically a thin piece of metal which is fixed at 45° onto or into the stock, forming a 'T' shape. The stock is usually much thicker than the blade and is made from wood, metal or plastic. Until the development of factory-made squares in the 18th century miter squares were made entirely from wood, though some woodworkers still make themselves wooden miter squares.^[1]

Other forms of miter square include the dovetail square, with the blade set at an angle suited to marking out dovetail joints, and the Japanese miter square, a flat piece of metal with a thin metal stock along one edge – similar in construction to a speed square.^[3]

Some other types of square incorporate miter squares, such as combination squares, speed squares, and try squares with a mitered stock.^[4]^[1]