Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cutter

[jamieduff1981]

Hello everyone. I'm new here and building my first dinghy. It's Tom Dunderdale's Campion Apple 16. I've never done any work on a boat before so am learning as I go here.

I bought the plans after reading a review of the boat, watching some videos which Mr Dunderdale directed me to and after reading another thread on this forum. Then I ordered some marine ply and a few lengths of household timber just for miscellaneous use.



I have a reasonable amount of reclaimed iroko worktops from a school science lab. Many things in my house were made from it by the man who built my house, and there was a lot more left over in the outbuilding, so I'm using it where I can. Hardwood is quite difficult to get in Scotland unless paying through the nose for it both in terms of the material itself but also postal costs are just unattractive.

I started with the rudder headstock. I have two young daughters and want to involve them as much as they wish to be involved. My pace is not fast as frankly I don't get a lot of spare time with spare energy to go with it.





I'm using these Oilite bronze tophat bushes for the rudder blade so there isn't a rotating bearing surface onto softwood. It works nicely.




For the epoxy I'm using West Systems 105 with slow hardener. There's no rush and I need all the working time I can get.

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
One of the attractions of this design for me was the lack of any need to build a strong back or any moulds, partly from a time aspect but also just due to the very high costs of timber here.

The hull planks are efficiently nested in two pairs of 8' x 4' sheets of 6mm marine ply. These can be butted and glassed together or scarphed. I'm reliably assured that the former method is perfectly sound but I didn't like the sound of it so decided to scarph.


I've seen nice jigs for scarphing neatly but I didn't make one and just eyeballed it.


The epoxy joint was made using some milled fibres


There's a handy table with the coordinates to loft out the hull planks. This took me a bit longer than it probably should but it wasn't too painful.


I cut the planks out with a circular saw one pair at a time clamped together.

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Not really knowing what I was doing, I used far too many tie-wraps (Americans call these zip ties I think) along the keel. I learned quickly enough and didn't use so many for subsequent seams.


It was good bending the first pair of planks into something 3 dimensional. I left these for a day or two to relax a little into shape. As before - no rush.


Adding the second planks, it started quickly to look like something exciting, but there was a big gap along the seam at the bow end and I was fearful I'd messed up the lofting.




With the third planks added the bow still wasn't looking too clever. I realised that the keel isn't supposed to be a straight line but rather there's a sweep end to end. I wasn't sure what effect sitting flat on the floor would ultimately have on it all but presumably nothing good, so I made up two trestles and my family helped me lift this somewhat floppy and precarious assembly up. Rather than get better, the hull was at its weakest with the third planks fitted and had a real penchant for turning inside out at the aft end and flopping down over the trestle. Adding the transom didn't help much!

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
The girls helped me hang the fourth planks. I did the holding up whilst they drilled holes and tie-wrapped it. Not difficult, but it would have been if I were doing it alone.

With those fitted it became a lot stronger and we decided to flip it over to 5 minute epoxy spots along the seams.

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
There were a number of plywood frames to mark out. I've left the curved tops marked out but uncut so I could level the boat easily to ensure I didn't twist the hull.



My eldest daughter plotted out a couple as well and learned a little about reading scale drawings from it.



Once happy it was about the right shape - and after lifting onto the trestles the keel sagged into its proper form and all those tiewraps at the bow went slack and the gaps disappeared (cue big relief!) we cut 50mm fibreglass tape into various lengths



I realised I couldn't reach the keel and I'm much too heavy to get into the boat whilst it's held together with tie-wraps, so I lifted the bigger child in who somewhat reluctantly learned how to paint on epoxy resin then stipple the cloth down to fully wet it out between the tie-wraps.



200g of resin got us the centre line and a few extra spots in the bow spot glassed together.

[biglad]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Looking good!

I'm also in Scotland, though at the opposite end of the country to you. I built a stitch and tape boat, similar to yours a few years back. I did the taping a slightly different way... I filled the v shaped seams between the planks on the outboard side between the plastic ties with thickened epoxy and let it cure. Once it's cured it'll hold the planks together, you can then cut the ties and do your glass taping in one long length.

Supplies wise - For my current build I used Timbmet in Glasgow and John Moody Marine timber (John is on the south coast of England but postage is reasonable). I did buy pre Covid so not sure what has happened to prices since. I know for other timber I buy eg fencing, CLS, cladding etc it's gone up a fair bit.

[AndyG]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
What a lovely looking boat! I've just been down the Campion Apple online rabbit hole, and - gaff-rigged cutter, lug yawl or single lug rig - I think you've gone for the best sail plan. I will be following this build,

Andy

[dbp1]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Looking great -- excited to follow your progress!

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Thanks everyone!

We got the rest of the seams spot glassed and also spot glassed the frames in place.





The glass was flatted back with a power sander a bit in preparation for taping over later in full. Naturally I was careful not to overdo it and sand through the actual glass fibres and compromising the whole point!


Next we cut out all the tie-wraps which I thought would be rewarding but actually was a bit tedious if I'm honest, then some general tidying up on the outside started to reveal something starting to resemble a boat.


Before glassing the seams in full I wanted to add the gunwales as I'm confident they will somewhat alter the shape of the hull by fairing out the shear line and I'd rather use the glass to lock it in that shape. The bow in particular preferred to straighten out somewhat.


To ensure the bow adopted a fair shape when gluing up the gunwales, rather than rely on the stiffness of the laminations themselves I made temporary braces to clamp in during the gluing. Using some scrap wood it seemed to work.

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
I had ordered some nice longer lengths of iroko as well as Douglas Fir at the same time to save on postage/shipping but because of cost these were bought as rough sawn boards which is also new to me.



I admit at this stage I got most of the above done in winter/spring this year, then got scared of ruining this timber, bought another classic car and then took it apart so I'm rapidly catching up with time-now. Having got the car back together in early August just in time for a family trip to Orkney in it, I've turned my attention back to building Melitele.

I don't keep many friends as I don't find many people enjoy my enthusiasm (or even just hide their disdain for it) for making things. My wife is really great but isn't that keen on helping me machine timber. I bought the girls some new ear defenders and recruited them to help. In truth I expected wastage and errors but the first board has gone really well. It's a simple thing, I know, but for a beginner it's been really great seeing a nice piece of iroko emerge from a rough sawn board and I think even the girls found that quite rewarding since we did it ourselves.




The next thing to do was to cut the thicknessed board down into strips. @dbp1, I think it was on your thread (forgive me if I'm mis-remembering this!) that you had breakages with the plans 20 x 20mm square strips, so to mitigate this I cut mine narrower to use more laminations. I got a 20 x 20mm strip for the stem and the hardwood keel back to the daggerboard case out of this first board. I'll have to use a second for the inners and the skeg but that still leaves me with plenty later.


Still fearful of breakages even with the thinner strips I mocked up one lamination and happily it follows the shear line without too much drama, which is nice!

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Some imbicile has smashed the screen on my scales so I can't mix the West Systems epoxy. I cheated and used 1 hour epoxy mixed 1:1 instead to glue on the stem piece and I ordered new scales this morning. Tonight I can cut the forward ends of the gunwale laminations to fit the stem ready to glue up when the replacement scales arrive.


This brings me up to date!

Thanks for reading

[dbp1]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Yes -- I had a bunch of pieces break, and eventually went quite thin -- though they were Douglas fir, not Iroko, so who knows! Iroko seems harder to find this side of the Atlantic -- it looks very pretty though!

(instead of weight, you can mix by volume... it's more tedious, but if you have plastic cups, like that food came in or something, you can measure the two marks you want with water and mark the line on the outside with a marker. Once the epoxy cures, it _usually_ pops right out of plastic containers, so you can re-use them... though I've only done this with 2:1 ratio epoxies, not WEST, where the ratio is a bit more extreme!)

[swoody126]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
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[The Jeff]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />
Nice! I really like that cutter rig and plumb bow. If I'd known about the Campion boats when I was looking at plans the Apple 16 would have given my First Mate a run for its money.

I'll definitely be following along!

[jamieduff1981]

Re: Melitele - my Campion Apple 16 Cuttebr />

Yes -- I had a bunch of pieces break, and eventually went quite thin -- though they were Douglas fir, not Iroko, so who knows! Iroko seems harder to find this side of the Atlantic -- it looks very pretty though!

(instead of weight, you can mix by volume... it's more tedious, but if you have plastic cups, like that food came in or something, you can measure the two marks you want with water and mark the line on the outside with a marker. Once the epoxy cures, it _usually_ pops right out of plastic containers, so you can re-use them... though I've only done this with 2:1 ratio epoxies, not WEST, where the ratio is a bit more extreme!)

Thanks Daniel. Fingers crossed these go ok. I have today off work (but have to make a work call anyway in quarter of an hour). I'm going to mark and cut the bow ends of the laminates after that and will hopefully get them glued up tomorrow if I can. The new scales arrived - they only go up to 200g which is the most I've been mixing in one go so far although I admit I misread in my haste and thought they went higher than this! They're very precise for small quantities though and I can get moving again which is the main thing. For the main fibreglass skinning I'll probably do as you suggest and mix by volume.

Nice! I really like that cutter rig and plumb bow. If I'd known about the Campion boats when I was looking at plans the Apple 16 would have given my First Mate a run for its money.

I'll definitely be following along!

Thank you nice person whom I assume is named Jeff ?