Re: The "New Boat"
The squares are there for several purposes as core material. Certain brands of boat have used that type of core instead of single wood pieces for a while, I believe.
First, they provide more stiffness than a single piece of wood. The reason for this is sort of complicated, but with glue in between the square cores it's stiffer at the same thickness and weight.
Second, it's cheaper to use them instead of single wood pieces. They can be cut from any piece of small wood scrap the right thickness.. very little plywood waste in the factory. It's much harder to mis-cut a wood core, since it's essentially a jigsaw of these squares. If a core is damaged for any reason or penetrated for a via or bolt, and needs to be made whole later in the build process, you just core out the square and put another in.
Third, the squares isolate the wood core sections. If one gets wet, the glue between the sections will keep water from wicking everywhere and rotting the whole panel. Again, the single square core can be replaced more easily than a larger panel.
Fourth, as noted they conform to curves better than flat cores.
All this is balanced by the factory against the time needed to prep and install all those squares. If you design your build process around use of them, it can produce a better quality product with less waste than the traditional way of doing things, especially if your boat designs involve a lot of curved, cored panels.
Erik
