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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 :-)