Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cutter

[John Meachen]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
My guess is that the trailer was a gunwale hung 505 type originally,judging by the distance between the gunwale supports.Your boat is likely to be a bit heavier and it may be a smart move to add a bit of support near the turn of the bilge.Do you have bilge keels?They are quite handy for this type of thing.

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Hi folks,

There are no bilge keels on the Apple 16, but the trailer definitely needs to be modified to distribute loads around more. Even without Tom Dunderdale's (the designer) comments I wouldn't like to drive around with the boat bouncing along the road on 3 point loads. I like having the gunwale hangers there as the will provide some lateral location but I do not want weight carried there. I'll be adding some brackets to fit some beefy wooden boards I can cover with spare carpet. Soon, in fact.

In other news, I was sitting in bed at 0700 on Sunday morning drinking coffee and scrolling through phones with my wife. She held her phone over to me and asked if I'd like a non-working wood lathe and a big pile of chisels for £50, whilst showing me a Facebook Marketplace listing from our nearest big-ish town 20 minutes away. I messaged the seller who said "the sooner the better" so we agreed to arrive there by 0800. I gave them £50 and loaded the stuff into the back of the car.

I had breakfast when we got back, and by 1000hrs the lathe was working properly. Luckily for me, the seller was not good with electrical things and it was just really bad wiring. Other than watching some wood turners on Youtube once in a blue moon, my only previous experience with wood turning was a quick go on a lathe once at school - one of those lessons where the class lines up for a quick attempt before the next kid tries it. For really basic stuff it doesn't seem too difficult though. By 1100hrs on Sunday morning I had made myself a fid.






There's definitely room for improvement but for my first attempt at turning something myself I'm fairly happy with it.





So much so that I made another





I am going to order the thimbles to go into the rope cringles of my staysail and gaff mainsail. Once they arrive, I shall make a split fid to aid installing them, as well as another for the man who ran the sail making course we're on to suit dimensions he's going to send me for the thimbles if he wants to use.

[John Meachen]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
That is a much better lathe than I have and your early work is very creditable.I've only had one or two black fingernails.... Are there many opportunities for including a few round features?Perhaps a mast truck?They can be quite handy for flag halyards.

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
I'm almost certain I'll find uses for this along the way. I'm not exactly sure what yet, but for £50 it seemed like the obvious thing to do was to buy it! My wife observed that turning wood is considered by many to be a hobby in its own right. I think for me it'll just be a tool though. I have a thickness planer and a hydraulic press, but I doubt my hobbies will ever be "thinning down wood" or "crushing things".

I have sketched up a split fid which started much shorter. There has been a bit of back and forth with the sail maker / course instructor Mark about how he'd want to use it so I drew it longer like this so he could clamp it between his knees and press the rope cringle down over it. It does end up more like a vampire stake though and perhaps a bit hard to stow so I'm shortening the base of it about 40mm from this sketch's proportions and I will lose some of the excess untapered length from the front to shorten by about 60mm overall. It'll screw together using a snooker cue brass connector thingie.



As our staysail and gaff main are getting rope cringles and brass thimbles too, I'm going to make one for myself first which can be a little shonky and hopefully apply any learnings to the one I make for Mark...

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
That's been a fairly intensive weekend, and some dinghy happened along the way. Unfortunately my photographic record captures everything half-done.


I glued up the internal timbers in the bow on Friday.





On Saturday these were all trimmed and excess epoxy dealt with and now it looks quite tidy.


Then, we temporarily bolted up the chainplates to the hull and made both shrouds and one of the forestays. These have a loop at the top swaged in place and are swaged to a turnbuckle at the bottom finally attached to the hull fittings with a quickly removable pin. Luckily being interested in cars but not interested in paying for third parties to keep the things I like running, I bought a 20 tonne hydraulic press around 10 years ago. It has paid for itself many times over in garage bills avoided, and served again in swaging the cables nicely. I'm very glad I have it!





When the loops at the top were done the 3 stays were cut about 150mm / 6 inches over and the mast was stepped and angles checked before the actual length was measured leaving me plenty adjustment either way on the turnbuckles.





The turnbuckle fittings were then swaged to the bottom end of each cable. In my childish glee at seeing my very first dinghy with the mast in and standing rigging in and snugged up (not too tight) I took a short video but neglected to take a still photograph with it all in place properly...


Today I "dry" fitted the rudder. Whilst the gudgeons are almost certainly fine and it's hard to imagine hurting the 8mm diameter pins themselves, the Allen pintles are maybe a bit weedy. It feels fine, but I acknowledge that rudders and their hardware can get quite a bit of punishment. I think I'll keep the pins but fabricate some heavier bands to fix to the headstock.

[jamieduff1981]

Hi folks,

It's been a busy summer so far, and not in the good way!

The foredeck isn't glued down yet but the bits fit reasonably nicely now:


I've decided though that it's getting high time I finished the outside of the hull, so I ordered up hard wearing paint products suitable for marine use from a supplier I know very well and trust.



Other than the varnish for my spars of course, they are all white but they are chemically compatible with the liquid colourants I use in my little model paint business so I am able to make the exact shade I want for the hull above the rubbing strips on my paint mixing machine



With the goal of getting the hull dressed up in mind I relocated it out into the garden and flipped it over again. I still had two hardwood strips to glue on either side of the daggerboard slot, which I did.



I've then become a bit fussier than I originally intended and have been using a baton and a pencil to mark out areas that will annoy me and dealing with them ahead of paint, and rollering on additional coats of epoxy in the process.



Overall I think it'll be ok and I'm trying not to be too hard on myself. With the benefit of hindsight I should have spent more time on the original scarph joints of the plywood as there have been little humps at the joints. They are not deep under the batons, but if the paint finish is glossy I'll see the unfairness in the reflections so there are big wide skims of epoxy and microballoon filler to fair this out. If I get to build a second boat, I'll do things differently. I still fully intend to finish this dinghy and enjoy it though, so want to avoid the trap I so easily fall into which is finding something less than perfect and abandoning the project because of it.

[jamieduff1981]

I've been painting a 2-pack polyurethane undercoat on the hull lately, and I have one more coat to go. The finish isn't going to be what I imagined when I started, but it will be serviceable. The whole boat isn't what I imagined at the start, but it'll be serviceable. I can always build another boat later and employ what I've learned along the way.

I made a fitting for the end of the bowsprit on Saturday.



I was supposed to do some more paint yesterday but instead decided that the best thing to do in the hot weather was metalwork. I think I've now made all the custom fabrications apart from however I attach the bobstay at the stem.

Still, that meant I was able to attach the bowsprit (almost) properly, therefore the second forestay could be made, but not properly tensioned just yet. Using some cheap string as a halyard, I found running the jib up irressistable.



We then did some garden sailing to check the rough positions for the sheet fairleads although I'll revisit that once the bobstay plus proper cord for the halyards allow me to get the luff tension somewhere sensible.



Lastly, we dismantled and flipped her back over before some rain came in...

[gray duck]

Sailing through the pines on a summer day. Very nice!

[pez_leon]

The whole boat isn't what I imagined at the start, but it'll be serviceable. I can always build another boat later and employ what I've learned along the way.

I'm sure this is true enough but it seems to me to be far more downcast than your work merits. If you will permit me a little long-distance psychophilosophising: you sound like I do when I have fallen into a gumption trap. You've put a great deal of work in the project but haven't yet felt the reward of sailing it. The same attention and care for detail that have gotten you here are constantly reminding you of issues that can seem huge but that, at least from over here, look and sound pretty trivial.
In my experience a very few miles of water passing under her sole will wash all those worries away. I can't take my boat anywhere without people stopping me and telling me they are amazed that I made it. Belive me, I see plenty of mistakes still. It's just far easier to measure them in proportion to the joy of using the boat.
Keep at it! She looks great and I have no doubt she'll bring you joy.

- James

[jamieduff1981]

I'm sure this is true enough but it seems to me to be far more downcast than your work merits. If you will permit me a little long-distance psychophilosophising: you sound like I do when I have fallen into a gumption trap. You've put a great deal of work in the project but haven't yet felt the reward of sailing it. The same attention and care for detail that have gotten you here are constantly reminding you of issues that can seem huge but that, at least from over here, look and sound pretty trivial.
In my experience a very few miles of water passing under her sole will wash all those worries away. I can't take my boat anywhere without people stopping me and telling me they are amazed that I made it. Belive me, I see plenty of mistakes still. It's just far easier to measure them in proportion to the joy of using the boat.
Keep at it! She looks great and I have no doubt she'll bring you joy.

- James

Thank you James, this is very reassuring!

[WI-Tom]

In my experience a very few miles of water passing under her sole will wash all those worries away. I can't take my boat anywhere without people stopping me and telling me they are amazed that I made it. Belive me, I see plenty of mistakes still. It's just far easier to measure them in proportion to the joy of using the boat.
Keep at it! She looks great and I have no doubt she'll bring you joy.

- James

Yep. Plenty of imperfections in my boat--which by the way took me 7 years to build. The hull isn't properly faired, really. I misjudged the length of my inwales and had to splice in an extra bit--pretty sloppy, actually. I never bothered to round the edges of my thwarts at all, which leaves lots of surprisingly sharp edges to dent shins. I forgot to finish my mast step properly--left the hole oversized instead of filling with epoxy and redrilling to the proper size (that one cost me a busted mast, which was fairly simple to repair anyway). The shaping of the stem isn't particularly symmetrical. The paint job is pretty sloppy if you look close.

Does any of that matter?

West Fox Island.jpg

Not really.

Tom

[jamieduff1981]

Does any of that matter?

West Fox Island.jpg

Not really.

Tom

That looks like an ideal vision, and I am very keen to get my boat out on the water and explore a bit likewise!

[jamieduff1981]

On Saturday my friend helped me machine down unwieldy lengths of Douglas Fir and glued two of them together. Yesterday morning my daughters helped me glue the other two together, then machine yesterday's to final dimensions, mark out the taper, cut the taper, plane and sand the corners off and last night I've fettled the gooseneck fitting. The whole thing is now ready for a final smooth sanding and varnishing.

If anyone's unsure what this is, then a re-familiarisation with renowned classical poet Baldrick's masterpiece "The German Guns" should give you the inspiration you need.

That just leaves the shorter gaff to make from yesterday morning's glue up, although that needs hardwood jaws made before tapering and shaping.

[jamieduff1981]

I've been making the jaws for the gaff from Iroko. There is still work to be done - they're too wide for a start, but that was intentional to ensure I didn't do a me and make them too narrow!

I'll round over the corners of the jaws themselves before gluing them to the Douglas Fir spar, and I'll cut the various tapers on the spar itself before gluing on the jaws. I also will plane down the corners of the spar but leave final rounding until the jaws are permanently attached.

[John Meachen]

I really would like to be wrong and I may be.Those jaws concern me a bit due to the short grain in both plan view and side view.Will there be any additional reinforcement?