Hi George,

My experience with carbon fiber is good. We used carbon fiber (hand lay-up)extensively in building sailplanes. You can get excellent strength and stiffness from the material, if you do it right. Poor craftsmenship will certainly result in poor performance. The best strength is certainly achieved with autoclaves.

Andreas

: Carbon fiber and the epoxies that we use do not do well. If you lay a layer
: of carbon fiber over wood and then apply torsion to the wood you will hear
: a good deal of cracking.

: In general, it is difficult to get either the strength or stiffness of carbon
: fiber with hand layups.