Before I got to the part in your post where you talked about cutting one leg off a framing square I was going to suggest doing exactly that. You mentioned yours is aluminum but they come in both aluminum and steel. I think Home Depot carries the steel Empire version. It's got some sort of coating on it to prevent rust but in my experience the coding flaked off over years and it started to rust anyway. For that reason, most recently I went with an aluminum version by Milwaukee that has anodized aluminum with roll formed and painted markings. Good luck.
That's a great use case for aluminum. I might suggest, however, that the ability to stick a magnet to a framing square is super useful at times. A magnetic bullet level on a framing square is a powerful combination of utility.
Thus, I still keep my old steel Empires, tarnish and all.
But of course I also have the Aluminum.
