Anyone ever used this material?

[Red in Texas]

I mean, have any rich folks ever used this material.

http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?form_ ... on=product

http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?form_ ... on=product

Seems like it ought to solve eveyones problems. Lightweight, superior strength, high tech........now there's just the matter of cost.

[asianflava]

If I were to do something in CF I'd lay it up then bag it. It would be cheaper with less waste. With my limited experience, I remember it being difficult to "wet out" which is why I'd prefer to bag it. Not that I plan on doing anything anytime soon.

The first sentence in your post excluded me.

[angib]

Seems like it ought to solve eveyones problems. Lightweight, superior strength, high tech........now there's just the matter of cost.

I'ver used carbon quite a bit and it's a wonderful material for specific jobs, but not the answer to everything. An 18ft dinghy that you can pick up with one hand (really) is astonishing, but for $20,000, it should be!

Because carbon is so strong, it can be made very thin. This is fine for overall strength, like in a carbon fishing rod. But for a teardrop body, we need almost no strength at all - just enough to support itself. Instead we need some rigidity (walls that flexed in and out as you breathed in and out would get real tedious) and some durability. Really thin walls are bad for both of these things, so being able to make really thin walls in carbon isn't actually useful - it then needs loads of stiffening added to it.

If we put a thin sheet of carbon on either side of some structural foam, we get:
- a super-lightweight wall that is 1/2"-3/4" thick overall and superbly strong;
- a very expensive wall that needs lots of time and skill to make;
- a wall that you can poke a decent-sized penknife through.

The last point is the killer - if you want a wall with a carbon outside skin that you can't poke a penknife through, it will weigh as much as fiberglass and more than ply.

Probably the ultimate wall that meets all the requirements is good 1/8" ply bonded on to each side of 1/2" structural foam. But this good foam is expensive - you can substitute cheap insulation-type foam, but the strength will suffer. But it might be good enough - who's going to try it?

Andrew