Realistic Strengths of Homebuilt Carbon Fiber?

Hi all


Was purusing the Marske flying wing glider website.....pretty cool tooo....look
ma, no horizontal stabilizers or computer controls....

http://www.continuo.com/marske/carbon/carbon.html

Anyway, he also sells extruded carbon fiber rod....the stuff is amazing! 14
times the tensile strength per pound of 6061 AL and 4 times the stiffness per
pound!

Now, that sure makes you want to incorporate the stuff into the more critical
areas of a composite structure (like the spar cap etc etc...)...

The problem is.....your gonna have to incoportate it into your hand laid up
epoxy/fiber construction....and I'd always wonder about how much I could expect
the strength of my homemade composite material to be....

So, if I was designing using this stuff....I'd probably just use "normal"
numbers for homebuilt level composite strengths and throw in some of this stuff
for a fudge factor/piece of mind when it came to ultimate strength...

Which brings me to my question.....if you are doing homemade carbon fiber
layups...and you are reasonably careful in its construction....what kind of
real world numbers can you expect for strength and stiffness per pound over
aluminum?

2x? 3x? 4 x?.....

take care

Blll