Two- versus one-part tangs

[Ian McColgin]

I must be missing something.

If you have a fork it must go to an eye. I can't imagine a reason, except ease of building, why it matters which is which. Chainplates are usually a single tang and very robust, filling the space in the stay's fork. Mast tangs can be either but it's often easier to work with two pieces of thinner stainless to make a fork than to work with one to make a tang - depending on where. An over-the-truck tang that holds both headstay and backstay might be more readily made of one piece with forks on the stays. Shroud tangs, especially lowers, might be forks but might be eyes if made up Herreshoff style for screwing to a wooden mast.

Assuming they are matched - and manufactorers seem to be wonderfully consistant in pin and hole sizes and matching for a give wire size - you will have a fair load. Forks and eyes are ubiquitous in the marine industry.

I could see some unfair loading if the fork is really made of two tangs coming out from some bolts into the mast. Unlike a forged fork that you'd find in a stay terminal it is easiy to imagine that one could have a little misalignment. As it happens, most people drill the hold-down holes in the outer tang first, then put the pin in both and clam them to the bench while drilling through to the inner tang. Or pin, clamp and drill them bother. Either way, it's hard to go wrong and it's hard to fit the correctly sized pin through misaligned holes.

G'luck