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Laminating carbon fibre in neck blanks + before and after measurements
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Laminating carbon fibre in neck blanks + before and after measurements
Two pieces of maple, each of which were measured beforehand and then cut up and epoxied back together to keep things as consistent as possible. Even the orientation of the grain was the same to avoid any impact of vertical vs horizontal grain lines. The plain maple had one layer of 300gsm 12k unidirectional carbon fibre between each piece, the flame maple had two per lamination, which may be why it sees a smaller gain afterwards? Lots more carbon to saturate properly and I’m not sure if I did. Used West systems 105 and 207 clear hardener, and otherwise just did things as normal for a neck lamination process.
The main goal here was to get some ballpark figures, but the 43% increase of the plain maple is hard to argue with. Even 12% is significant with the same piece of wood! Would be really keen if someone had a more professional setup and did the same thing, but this is just early days. The logic was that in tension, distance of the material from the geometric centre is a huge factor to how much stiffness and strength it adds, so carbon fibre rods under the fretboard may not do all that much for the volume they’re taking up. But the full thickness means after you carve this, the carbon will be right at the edge of the neck the entire time. With presumably greater gains for your modern 5, 9, 13+ piece necks.
The main issue is the health hazards and carving — epoxy is too hard to cut with bladed handtools tools. At least this epoxy. However sandpaper and the shinto saw rasps work great, as does a power thicknesser with carbide cutters. Also, the dust is very dangerous, but I assume for low volumes a respirator and hepa rated dust system (which we all should have, those tropical woods are no joke) should be plenty. Unlike the repair method Ian’s come up with, this does involve turning carbon into dust, and that should be stated upfront before y’all get ideas. Also worth noting this is likely worse for stiffness than Ken Parker’s approach of laminating the entire back of the neck with a sheet of carbon, but it lets you keep traditional construction methods and aesthetics. (His latest thing of veneer over the carbon is clever, but still niche in acceptance from guitar players. A more modern twist on the parker fly is also an option, I’ve thought of using Hypetex’s colored carbon fibre for that instead of painting over the carbon layer! But that’s for a future project…)
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2 Replies
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Very interesting! Thank you for sharing these results.
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Thanks for this! I worked with FRPs, carbon fiber, etc. for years as a shipwright and never came across colored product like the Hypetex you mentioned. Very cool!
Hypetex makes flax-based and carbon fiber products in various colors and weights. As long as you avoid their unidirectional product, I bet the lower price/weight (gsm) products would suffice… Their minimum order quantity is 5 square meters, so this would be more for a regular production shop than for a garage workshop like my own, but!!! They make CUSTOM COLORS. Mind blown.
I didn’t see technical guidelines for the flax products, but the carbon fiber fabrics are compatible with any epoxy-based resin. For a luthier’s neck-strengthening purposes, a lightly clamped wet layup should work fine if you want to avoid vacuum infusion. Just cut the fabric down to a bit oversize to limit dust from final shaping, and don’t over-flood the fabric with resin.
PS Has anyone tried or come across G10 fiberglass used to stiffen a composite neck? Or perhaps between a neck and fretboard?
The dust is just as unfriendly to lungs as carbon fiber, but it has similar material benefits at a significantly lower price. It’s not as strong as carbon fiber, but it’s significantly less brittle, way easier to machine, and only about 15-20% heavier (a 1/16″ sheet the size of a fretboard would weigh just over 2oz.). It’s 3-4x stronger than ebony or rosewood, AND you can buy it ready to go instead of buying expensive epoxy and doing a wet layup or vacuum infusing it.
A square foot of 1/16″ would run $20/25, maybe less. A very attractive number (and workload) for anyone who’s spent over $100 for a quart of West System with hardener… Of course, you’d want to use epoxy for the G10 glue-up, but you’d need a lot less than you’d use to wet out carbon fiber cloth.
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