Inside IYRS: Visible Backbones

Written by: Tom
10/25/2009 4:42 PM

Many of the first and second year students are involved in the backbones of their boats these days.

Over on the Gar Wood, the components for the forward section of the backbone have been built. Here you're looking at the fore keel, the gripe and the stem.

You may be wondering about the curved joints between the gripe and the fore keel and the stem. Here's what we're talking about.

If you were going to build this boat at home, you would probably make this joint using straight cuts. After all, it's much easier to make a tight joint using 2 straight cuts than to fit 2 curved pieces together. However, if you're a company making lots of these parts, the easiest way to make them is to have a master pattern and then use a bearing-guided router to run along that pattern and cut the shape of your part. These routers can't make sharp, angled inside corner cuts, they can only do rounded inside corners.

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