The Little Blue Book
The modern field reference, included with select Speed® Squares.
Seven chapters that fit in a Speed® Square box and a tool belt: read the Speed® Square, cut a common rafter, cut a hip or valley, lay out a stair, find any pitch, cut plywood sheathing, convert any fraction. The Speed® Square method in its most distilled form. For the deeper material (jack rafters, building-width corrections, the Big 12 + Layout Bar), read the Pro Reference next.
Table of contents
The chapters, in reading order.
- Chapter
01
Reading the Speed® Square
Identify every scale on the Speed® Square, know which scale to use for which cut, and understand why one number on the COMMON scale anchors every cut on a roof at that pitch.
- Chapter
02
Cutting a Common Rafter
Lay out a common rafter from rise + run + length, with the right plumb cut at the ridge and the right tail cut at the eave.
- Chapter
03
Roof Pitch Reference
Convert between rise / run, pitch fraction (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, full), angle in degrees, and rafter length per foot of run for any pitch from 1/12 to 24/12.
- Chapter
04
Cutting a Hip or Valley Rafter
Lay out a hip or valley rafter from the same rise + run as a common rafter, with the right plumb cut at the ridge, the right cheek cut at the corner, and the bird's mouth that lets it sit on the corner of the wall plate.
- Chapter
05
Stair Stringer Layout
Lay out a stair stringer of any height with risers within 1/8 inch of each other, treads at the right run, and a stringer that ties cleanly into the joist header.
- Chapter
06
Cutting Plywood Roof Sheathing
Cut a sheet of 4x8 plywood roof sheathing to match your roof pitch using nothing but a Speed® Square and a tape measure. One sheet, every pitch.
- Chapter
07
Decimal & Metric Conversions
Convert any common fraction (8ths, 16ths, 32nds, 64ths, 7ths, 6ths) to decimal in one glance, and convert any customary measurement (inches, feet, yards, square feet) to or from metric (mm, cm, m, sq m).
Or jump to a task
Browse by what you're cutting.
The same chapters indexed by task instead of reading order. Useful when you know the cut you need but not where in the book it lives.