It's so much easier to strip build with them . When you do a bow or stern, your strips go over the inner stem and you cut them off flush on each side of the inner stem - usually a tapered piece of wood,
like on yours. You can clamp them to the inner stem with epoxy etc. Then you "cap" it with an outer stem- a piece or lamination of wood. Then you sculpt it all to a nice blunt pointed end and it blends
together and it looks fabulous with no real crapftsmanship involved. You now have a solid piece of wood inside and outside the strips in case you go into a stone wall at 30 mph.

In compairson you would have to taper each strip to meet the other one approaching on the other side, and keep the alingment of the bow and stern shape at the same tiime which takea a lot more craftsmanship and I believe not as strong in the end.

I've done it both ways and will never go back to tapering in ends.