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oekmont - 5/27/2018 5:52:04 PM

Regular cloth doesn't make that much sense, as 50% of the fibres are basically wasted. Also, layering the cloth between each layer of timber isn't optimal, as the inner layers take much less load, reducing both stiffness and strength compared to the same material placed outside.
Regular epoxy laminating resin and unidirectional carbon or (!) glass should work fine. Ideal would be either a vacuum or regular veneer press

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Dravis - 6/1/2018 10:22:53 AM

Hi!

I have made several carbon-fibre reinforced "timber beams"  in effect they were raw "blocks" for cutting out the "core" of rifle stocks, and consisted of layers of 5 mm balsa-wood laminated with unidirectional Carbon cloth -using West Systems laminating epowy and vacuum bag consolidation, along with big "c-clamps"

The resulting ultra light weight "beam" was much stronger than conventional timber beams- even mulitple layered laminated beams made from Birch- of similar dimensions - and the beam stiffness was orders of magnitude better.
(They will however dull conventional band saw blades extremely quickly when you try to cut out the rifle-stock contours -- the owner of the band saw was not at all pleased with that :-|)

My take on this is that you would probably be able to make very stiff and strong beams using this simple tech -- but the CF inside the laminate will just be thin black lines, looking like black glue -- For decorative purposes you could laminate on an outer "bottom of beam" layer of wowen CF cloth.

I'm personally contemplating this for my new dining room table :-)