Campion Apple 16 Build

[dbp1]

After a lot of thought, and a few different abandoned directions (and several sets of plans), today I began building Tom Dunderdale's Campion Apple 16 (http://www.campionboats.co.uk/details.html). Here's a photo from the designer's website:



The closest runner up was Michael Storer's Goat Island Skiff, and in some ways, they have a bit of similarity: both _can_ be made out of 6 sheets of plywood (though with the GIS that gets you a sealed rear tank, rather than just a rear thwart -- probably many Apples end up with some sealed tanks, but then it'll be more plywood), both are a little under 16' long, roughly 5' wide, narrow bow, etc. Weighing on the side of the GIS was the size of the building community, quality of plans, etc. What ultimately sold me on the Apple though was the more developed (and wider) hull, more options thought out for seating, etc.

The only build log I found was a blog by Matt Bowser (http://www.fernhollow.net/), who also wrote an article about the boat in Small Boats Monthly (https://smallboatsmonthly.com/article/apple-16/). Both were were helpful, but he was building the Swedish Apple variant (as far as I could tell from the blog, both photos and plywood requirements), and a completely custom (and much heavier than I intend!) interior. Finally, there are a bunch of building photos on the official website (http://www.campionboats.co.uk/apple-construction.html), along with helpful text.

But, since I didn't find any logs of building the "original" (4 strake) Apple, I thought I would chronicle it here. Part of the reason I wanted to build the original one is that I think it's quite amazing how well the strakes fit into the plywood (the Swedish variant, which has 5 strakes per side rather than 4, requires 6 sheets of plywood for the strakes, rather than 4 -- though with some extra).

The plans are: interesting! My only comparison are a set of plans by Iain Oughtred and a few sets by Michael Storer, but I found the Apple plans much harder to understand at first. In particular, while there was an "original" boat, many alternatives have been made over the 25+ years since he first came up with the design, and they are all presented in different forms across the various drawings (sometimes overlapping!) -- and there are also alternatives for building the boat tougher or building it lighter. In some ways, this is an advantage -- as if you want to make some modification, there is a decent chance that it's been thought through and there might ever be a note on the drawings of what to do, but on the other hand, just figuring it all out is quite hard, at first (at least as compared to those other two designers, my only frame of reference).

Today was mostly just preparation, but here are some photos!

Boat shop almost ready (made some room to sit at the table after this photo). Assistant snoozing!


A cardboard 1:8 model of the hull, made to better understand the strake layout (stem was done sloppily).


Rather than scarfing, Tom suggests using 3" fiberglass tape, top and bottom (an staggered overlapped double layer on top), to make up the 4'x16' panels the strakes are cut out of. I've heard this called a "Payson" joint, though Tom attributes it in the US to Carnell, and in the UK to the Phantom racing dinghy community (going back to the 70s). The upside of doing rather than scarfing this is that it preserves the length, and that, combined with the fact that the 6mm Okoume plywood I have is 2500mm x 1220mm (rather than 2440mm), means I won't have to add any additional length for strake 0 (which is slightly longer than 16'). And apparently the joint is strong enough.

Before:


And after (during, I was in rather a hurry and didn't stop to take photos. I got fast epoxy because it's cold and getting colder, and my "shop" is uninsulated, but it's not actually all that cold yet and I _really_ didn't want to mess this up!):


Finally, though this is rather of a boring post (more interesting things to come!), I wanted to point out how tightly the designs pack into the plywood sheets: not only the strakes (which I know from the model!), but here is the transom (top) and one of the frames (bottom). Both go nearly to the end of the sheet (shy about 1mm), and they come within 1cm of each other.

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Yesterday I cut the transom, the forward bulkhead (at frame 10), and one of the other bulkheads (at frame 4). The one at frame 10 will stay essentially solid, to form the back side of the sealed bow tank, but the other one will eventually have a bit cut out of it, but that will happen much later. Based on recommendations, I cut them with a circular saw, which worked pretty well: I cut about 1mm off the line, and probably could have easily just split the line and avoided the finishing with a handplane -- controlling the blade was quite easy (and the 60T 6 1/2" blade certainly cut a smoother edge than the plane -- though I probably should have sharpened it again before starting!). On the other hand, planing was very quick with so little wood to take off.


From left: middle semi-bulkhead, front bulkhead, transom:


I also scarfed together an 18ft batten -- I think 17ft would have been fine, but I made it by ripping two strips off a really nice douglas fir 2x6 that is 9ft, so left it long for now.

Then, today, I started layout out the strakes. The way these work is there is a baseline drawn for each strake (0 through 3); strake 0 starts 9mm above the bottom of the sheet, but others are not all parallel to the bottom of the sheet. The offsets are then relative to the baselines, rather than relative to the bottom of the sheet of plywood. So, the first task is to draw the four baselines. The plans suggest stringing fishing line between finishing nails to draw the line, and drawing along that. I didn't have fishing line, so just used a fine string, and ran a ruler along, drawing section by section (trying to draw directly along the line was a disaster, as was using the "non-flexible" edge of my batten -- which still flexed by a few mm over the whole length).



Then I started marking the offsets that define the strakes. The table defines the Y coordinates relative to the corresponding baseline; the X coordinates are relative to the furthest left point of the strake, whose distance from the edge of the sheet is given. I actually found having all the X coordinate offsets be relative to that far point on the left unhelpful, because marking increasingly long distances (the last ones are above 4 meters) with any accuracy is hard, so I instead calculated the distance from one point to the next -- these were all helpfully less than the size of my (quite accurate) 600mm metric ruler and used that.



One slight annoyance: the lower and upper points on the strake were often _almost_ at the same X coordinate -- i.e., off by only a few mm. I'm not sure if there is a reason for that, but it seems like some of the Y coordinates could have been tweaked to make most of the X coordinates be shared by the lower and upper points for the strake. That would have saved a bunch of time measuring, as I would have only had to measure all the X coordinates and then measure the two Y coordinates for each X that was shared.

I marked out strake 0 -- the rest will have to wait! I knew I probably wouldn't have time to work on the boat for at least a few days, so I re-arranged enough stuff in the shop to flip the 16ft sheet up against the wall and lay down the other panel, and butt jointed that with fiberglass tape. When I'm next working on it, I should be able to take off the weights and lay the first panel directly on top of the second one, finish marking, and then cut out both sets of strakes at once (Matt Bowser did this on his Apple, with a larger diameter circular saw, so I should be able to cut the curves I need with a 1/2" deep cut). Then there will be a lot more shop re-arranging (the boat needs to co-habitate with a car once it starts snowing) before construction proper begins.

[The Jeff]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Good luck, I'll be watching this thread. I've always though that was a nice looking boat.

[skaraborgcraft]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Toms work, for some reason, does not get the attention i think it should. Nice to see a design of his get a build thread.

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

I finally got some more time to work on the boat today, so have some updates! Also, a note from before I forgot to mention:

I haven't talked much about the decisions I'm making in terms of the particular variation of the Apple I'm building, but one choice I have made is that I'm making the short, recessed deck. It'll use less plywood, which will weigh less, and will allow for a mast partner that is open at the back which will make it easier to step or unstep the mast underway. There are rough diagrams for how to fit this into the plywood with some of the frames and transom (which I cut out), but it didn't have dimensions, so I asked Tom what a safe margin would be, and he said that the bounding box for the recessed deck pieces could be 500mm by 1100mm, which fit well in the spot shown in the plywood layout diagram.

Back to the present-- I marked out the rest of the strakes (1-3), which was a lot of kneeling, measuring, etc. I'm again impressed by how tightly the strakes are nested. Here's the batten for 1 against the line for 0 (there's about 1cm difference at the closest), and some of the strakes hug pretty closely throughout. I probably was off by a mm here or there, but no more than that, which I think should be plenty accurate for stitch and glue!



Next comes the exciting part: cutting them out! I lined up the two joined panels carefully so they were exactly on top of each other (nice check: they are exactly the same size, so my joining didn't add any error, unless I managed to introduce the exact same error on both). Then I added some clamps so the bottom panel wouldn't move and started cutting. This mostly went smoothly, but the 2AH batteries on the cordless saw I had (a 6 1/2" makita) did _not_ last long, at least with the 60T plywood finish blade. I couldn't get a full panel out of the two batteries, so started the battery changing game, and alternated with working on other projects (I started the great garage re-organization process, but didn't get further than making a big mess).



By the end of the day (or at least, the part of the day I could work on this!), partly slowed by the battery process, I got 3 pairs out of 4 pairs of strakes cut out, so there is one to go. I set the blade just barely deep enough to cut the two panels (so just a hair deeper than 12mm), which meant that occasionally, when the top panel flexed up, the bottom panel wouldn't be completely cut through, but a few seconds with a pull saw got them out very cleanly.



I still need to cut the last one, and then finish them with a plane, but then it'll be time to start stitching, which is quite exciting!

[Michael_Owen]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Great! I like this boat, too. Good luck.

Mike

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

So a spent half an hour, cut out the last strake, and disassembled the support structure for the panels. Now the garage side of the garage can be a garage again, which is good because we may or may not get snow/freezing rain tomorrow, so the car can come inside!



The next task, which will take a bit, is re-organizing the _other_ half of my (quite small) garage to be able to fit this boat! Some of the furniture is going to move into the basement (into a smaller, no dust-generating tool shop carved out of the corner), but there is still a lot of figuring to make it all work.



Since I haven't talked much about it, but have thought a lot about it, I thought I'd describe a little bit of what I'm planning in terms of "customization" (i.e., the interior). There are lots of different internal configurations in the plans (a decent number of variations of the hull too!), and it's quite possible no two Apple's are the same (I don't actually know how many exist: the design is >25 years old, but I don't know how many have been built!).

At the bow, my plan is to have a recessed deck that forms a sealed bow tank. This is essentially what the original Apple design had: it provides some built-in buoyancy, some storage, and the deck is structural to support the mast partner. There is a design in the plans for a master partner, but I'm planning on using a slight variation which is what is on some of Iain Oughtred's boats: what holds the mast in is a hardwood cross piece that drops into a slot (tensioned from below by shock cord). This seems simpler than the slightly more complex mast gate in the plans, but overall, very similar.

Jumping to the stern, I'm planning on having a rear tank at the level of the stern thwart/sheet. This matches the design of the Goat Island Skiff, is one of the designs in the plans, and seems like a simple way to get some buoyancy, some dry storage, and a decent seat at the same time. It's made a little complicated because of the mizzen, which has to go _through_ the tank, but having a sealed tube that goes down to a sealed channel that drains to the bilge seems easy enough. Also, by using the stern tank I think the stern thwart can be pushed a little bit further back in the boat, which gives more space for the thwarts, which is nice if trying to pack people on in nice weather, with a motor, etc (though the boomkin prevents doing this too much, as it needs to land somewhere!).

Next, the middle: I'm planning on putting in a centerboard, which is _not_ typical (but is in the plans as an option!), but the more typical design has a very long daggerboard trunk, to accommodate different sail configurations, so a centerboard trunk shouldn't actually take up that much more space. The style I like best, and am planning on doing, is what is most common in Francois Vivier's boats, but from some thread on here (can't remember where), apparently dates back a long time: the board itself has pins on it, and they slide down into channels on the inside of the trunk. It is then held down (at various positions) by shock cord. Among other things, this means it is easily removable from the top and there is nothing that could ever leak (which, I understand they rarely do leak, but it makes me feel better!).

The most uncertain part left is the rest of the thwarts. I think I'm just going to run open thwarts along the sides, all the way from back to front, with a middle thwart at the back of the centerboard trunk (which can be used as a rowing thwart). That doesn't leave a ton of internal buoyancy, which means I should have some bags, but I think I'm okay with that -- rather than enclosing the side seats. But maybe I'll enclose the middle thwart? Who knows!

[Wayne Poulsen]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Hi dbp1
how well does that little cyclone pre filter work?
wayne
fremantle

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Hi Wayne,

It works well for what it is -- as long as the bucket underneath isn't full, essentially nothing (sawdust, planer chips, etc) ends up in the shop vac, so the shop vac never gets clogged up. But it obviously doesn't make the shop vac any more powerful than it is when it's empty, so it's no replacement for a real dust collector: dust still goes into the air every time I use the table saw, because there just isn't enough air being pulled.... So I still wear a mask if I'm cutting a bunch of stuff, and I have a cheap air cleaner up above that you can't see in the picture.

Cheers,
Daniel

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

So I haven't had as much time as I'd like (what's new!), and a _lot_ of that ended up getting eaten up just with re-organizing the "shop" (aka the garage) last week, which was surprisingly involved! After thinking about it a bit, and deciding I'd like to move things as little as possible, I measured everything and made cardboard models of them (and of the Apple-to-be) and then shifted that around. What I ended up with isn't perfect, but it works: the table saw is in the corner, but it can wheel out when it needs to, and the boat is against the car's spot in the garage, which is ideal, as that's space that can't have anything in it permanently (as the car needs to go in there when it snows), but will _usually_ be empty, so is convenient for moving around. The unavoidable compromises were that two tools that used to have permanent bench-level space now live in the corner, and have to be moved off of their almost-on-the-floor stands to be used: the miter saw and the planer. There have already been things I would have used the miter saw for and instead am grabbing a circular saw (building random shelves, also as part of the re-organization), but oh well - it's working!

Before (table saw is essentially at the line with the other parking spot -- the plywood on saw horses in the back is actually probably in the way, but it got moved anyway!):



And after:



(As part of this, the PDR standing in the rear of the other photo got moved to the other side, because the car doesn't actually go all the way to the rear! Without that, it probably would have been living outside!).

I was planning on building a frame (saw horses or something similar) that I could put locking casters on to make it easier to move the boat around as I'm working on it, as right now, the rear is pretty inaccessible, but I haven't yet. I can drag the metal saw horses without too much trouble, so we'll see.

Finally, this week I planed all the strakes down to the lines. There were two pairs (0 and 3, the big ones), where they were a little bit off -- i.e., if I lined up the two ends, then the middles ended up uneven before I started planing. Because I cut them stacked on top of each other, that _shouldn't_ have happened, but I'm assuming that my clamps shifted or something while cutting. I decided it was better to have them be slightly too small than to have them be uneven (the error is probably about 1/16th of an inch, and only for part of the strakes), so I clamped the ends to match and then planed both sides so they were even. I figured the error should be able to just be filled in with epoxy _anyway_ as part of the stitch & glue process. Or at least, that's the hope! Not too much too see, just a lot of time (and a break in the middle to re-sharpen) with my block plane:



At this point, I just need to clean up the butt joints (take off the excess epoxy out beyond the glass with a heat gun and sand the part over the glass at least a little) and then it'll be time to start drilling & stitching.

[UCanoe_2]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Lookin' good, Daniel! "Stuff" always expands to fit the available space. How do you like the WEN air filtration device?

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

It seems to work? At least, based on being able to smell/taste sawdust in the air before having it run for a while and not afterwards. It's relatively new, so no idea about longevity. But the combination of shopvac/cyclone, the air filter, and a 3M mask with interchangeable filters seems to be working for me (and for not very much money). I may need to move it now that I moved everything else -- it's high enough that I don't hit my head, but just barely, and it's a little unnerving, as it's right above where my stool often is! (it used to sit above the outfeed table).

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

I'm finally, after way too much time, finished scraping and sanding extra epoxy off of the butt joints (lesson: use less epoxy!). The heat gun, angled away from the joint (I'm not sure how much damage to the integrity of the joint it would do, but wanted to minimize it), made scraping off the epoxy pretty easy, but it still took ~20-30 minutes per plank, which adds up.




(in the above you can see the one bit of damage I did, when I wasn't paying attention with the heat gun and slightly scorched the plywood!)

At this stage, the one remaining thing to do before starting to stitch was to add reinforcing glass to the "upper edge at the bow" of strake 0, so the stiching wouldn't pull through. We had a freak spell of mid-50s weather at the beginning of this week, so I took advantaged of that to do that (colder weather epoxy is on the way, as is my determination to set up a plastic tent, etc), but I'm pretty sure I misinterpreted what that meant, and put it at the upper edge along the stem, rather than running back along the top of the strake towards the transom, as it seems that there is going to be a lot of strain an the latter and not much on the former (but, with some extra stitches, I think it'll be fine). [edit] After putting on more strakes, and in particular, starting to force the hull apart to fit the forward bulkhead, I've realized I wasn't wrong! I ended up having to actually put a bolt through the top of strake 0 along the stem, so the glass was useful! And there is confirmation later in the instructions that I was correct.[/edit]

Also, when doing this, I realized a "major" mistake, which I don't think will actually be that major: Tom says that for the butt joint, one side should be done with a single 3" piece of tape, and the other side with 2 slightly overlapping 3" pieces of tape. The double clothed one is then intended to be the outside of planking, as it should be a little stronger. Unfortunately, when I set up the two panels to cut out the strakes, I didn't reverse one, which means that I will have alternating inside and outside "stronger" taping. I'm not all that concerned about the overall strength -- I was on the fence about glassing the whole boat, but probably _will_ (this is more reason to), and at that point any difference should be not noticeable. A bigger concern is whether there might be some asymmetry in terms of fairness, as one side (of each plank -- I can alternate) will have slightly different bending characteristics to the other. But, the joints were always going to be a challenge to fairness, and given that my overall goal for this boat is "fair enough to be functional", I don't think it'll be a big deal.

Once I started, things went pretty quickly. Strake 0:



And strake 1:



One difficulty: in the instructions, it says to start from the stern and move _forwards_ to the stem. In email to me (about something unrelated), Tom said to do the opposite, saying I wouldn't be able to get the front panels to join together if I didn't start there. So, I tried to start from the stem (as instructed via email), but with the back of the panel wobbling around, I couldn't get things to hold in place (extra hands would be helpful!), so I ended up doing a mix -- add the rearmost, then one in the middle, then back to doing ones in the front. In the end, I couldn't get the front to quite join together, but I think that's more because the panels weren't pushed out enough. This gap:



Became smaller after I started adding the partial frames cut out of scrap 3/4" plywood. The instructions for this appeared a little later, but I think this may have actually been something I should have done immediately after wiring together strake 0. I haven't finished wiring those in, but once I do, I think I'll be able to close the gap above (maybe adding another wire or two), and then move onto strake 2. After strake 2, Tom says wiring in the actual bulkheads can be done, as there is enough support for them (strake 3 is the last strake, but it's one of the largest: as big as 1 and 2 together probably)

After all the wiring and fairing, I come to a slight challenge: the instructions say to "spot weld" the outside of the seams with 5 minute epoxy once it's fair, to ensure everything stays as it should during the main glassing/filleting that happens (first between the wires, then after they are removed throughout). It's quite cold here, (29 degrees now), and I work in an unheated garage that is not really air sealed. I have plastic to tent the boat, but haven't set that up yet, so while I have a space heater, running that into the air will do just about nothing. I've read that some of the 5 minute epoxy (e.g., JB Weld) will cure down to 32 degrees in not too much more time (maybe 10 minute to set rather than 5, and a couple hours to cure rather than 1), which seems promising, but I'm wondering if that's actually the case! Any experience?

The alternatively that is mentioned in the plans is using hot melt glue. In some ways, this seems ideal: it is heated by the gun (which will work regardless of the ambient temperature), and once it comes out, it _should_ cool! But, I wonder, to some extent, if there is any issue of adding a bunch of it onto the outside of the seams. Is that going to impact the integrity of the epoxy/glass that's added on afterwards? I don't want to try to scrape/sand it off later. I haven't used it since I was a kid, but remember it being pretty rubbery and not particularly strong, but maybe if there isn't too much of it it just won't matter? I've searched on here but the only references I can find are for strip planking to hold strips in place, after which things are entirely encased with epoxy/glass. Is that sufficiently similar? Or should I just go for the 5 minute epoxy and do it on a day that's above freezing (not too hard to do).

[dbp1]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

A bit more progress: one more strake (strake 2), plus the transom and both bulkheads (the midship one and the forward). After putting them in, I took out the plywood formers that were forming the same shape going up just strakes 0 & 1. The boat currently looks essentially like this (this was when the midship bulkhead was propped, before it was wired):



The forward bulkhead will form a bow tank, and will also support the mast partner -- strake 3 should go most of the way to the top of it (some of it will get cut off, as the bow tank is recessed). The other bulkhead will be mostly cut away: the back of the centerboard trunk will butt against it, and the sides will support side seats.

Putting these in was much more difficult than it should have been, because I hadn't added the station lines to the strakes before stitching them on. I hadn't thought too much about the placement for the bulkheads, but had sort of thought they would be measured from the bow or stern (which measurements _do_ exist: the offsets tables have measurements of each station at each chine), but given that these are complicated, 3D shapes (and thus tricky measurements), in retrospect it's obvious that the station lines should be added to the strakes when they are flat. And indeed, the points that are used to mark out the stakes _are_ the station marks (which I had suspected but, stupidly, never confirmed or did anything with). But two things made these not incredibly useful for me: 1. since I used the marks on one strake as a template to cut out both at once, there were only ever points marked on one strake, and on one side, and 2. while ideally, there would have been bits of the circles around the points left after planing, a few of the strakes were a little off, and so when I planed them to be even, those points were completely erased.

So: if you are building this boat, draw lines connecting the points top to bottom when the strakes are flat on the ground, probably on both sides (but at least, on the inside), and transfer them to both strakes! This is in the building instructions, but I missed it! (It also never quite mentioned that these were the _station_ marks...)

Otherwise, I spent a bit of time tweaking the wires, adding a few where there were gaps (including unwiring the transom and rewiring it once I tightened the rear of the hull). I also ran out of copper wire (I had bought a 25' roll of 16 gauge and another 25' of 18 gauge from duckworks -- I'm guessing that maybe 100ft of wire is enough for this boat if you don't redo too many things) and partly because I couldn't easily source more copper and partly because they were breaking really easily and this hull has quite a bit of twist, I got some 16.5 gauge steel rebar tie wire (400ft for $8). I know the steel will rust if any was left in the boat, but I'm not planning on epoxying over any of it: just between the stitches, then taking them all out, then a full glass + fillet, so getting it all out shouldn't be a problem. And it is working a lot better -- I'm sure I could do some damage to the wood, but as long as I'm careful, it can really pull things together, whereas the copper would break even before much tension was on it if I twisted it it incorrectly. It's a little less flexible than the copper, but that's made up for by it holding much better.




There are still a few gaps in the hull thus far -- most of them very small, and not of any concern. The one I don't know what to do about, and I think will just be filled with epoxy, is at the bottom of the forward bulkhead. The bottom strakes meet exactly, and the bulkhead is running along all the two upper strakes as it should, so either the bottom strakes are a little too wide, or perhaps the bulkhead should have been a little bit further forward. But, it's a pretty small gap (maybe a quarter inch?), and filling it with thickened epoxy seems doable:



Next I have to wire on the last strake, which is wide (on the finished boat, there will be a second rub rail halfway down it that gives the appearance of it being a separate strake). And then probably a bit more fine turning of the wires, to get everything as fair as possible. I also need to build some saw horses that are shorter than the 32" metal ones I have it propped on now (the saw horses and the 2x4 frame mean the boat is resting at 36"), as I could barely reach the middle of the boat at this height and there will be no way I can reach into the middle once the top strake is on, which I'll need to do for filleting.

[stromborg]

Re: Campion Apple 16 Build

Nice bit of progress there.

Before just filling in the gap I'd go back and triple-check as many measurements as possible for cumulative error before making them permanent. Are you sure the bulkhead is the right shape and in the right spot? Is the boat still level along all axis? As tight as those stitches are there is still a lot of flex in the structure as a whole. Don't let the desire to see progress today create unnecessary work tomorrow. (As they say, BTDT)