Where can I get the cloth? I've been reading about the guy who made his own carbon mountain bike (and then baboo/ carbon lugs), I've already e-mailed him, and I've been searching through the internet for places to buy the cloth. So far, the highest grade I've turned up is 6K carbon cloth sold by the yard at some shipbuilding website. Is the higher the number better with carbon fiber? I'm assuming it is, but it always helps to make sure.
Lastly, does anyone have any experience with carbon bikes? If I build mine, it'll be just for fun. If the mountain bike goes well, I'll make a highly overbuilt track bike that I might ride in nationals after testing a lot.

Thanks guys!


P.S: I won't build frames for anyone else, so I'm not going to try to take your business.

If you don't already know about Damon Rinard's site, you might be interested. Sheldon Brown's site has a link to it (or at least used to have one).

Try places like aircraft spruce and specialty, wicks, Noah's. Some model airplane places also sell the really light stuff. Sadly carbon has skyrocketed in price given the level of military use.

I am out of date on the grades. What you are contemplating is not necesarilly a high end use. Is it really like the ultra high aspect ratio wings on a drone? The parts are fairly large, and you have several things to consider. Such as strength and stiffness. Often a smidge more material is a good thing since it leads to more thickness and more stiffness. A more sophisticated layup system and higher end cloth might be stronger, but by the time you have the required material stiffness you are over the required tensile strength by a large margin.

Canoes are a good example. If you make them out of a thin skin of carbon, they are so thin the hull is rarely fair, and it may not have sufficient thickness to resist the deformation of the hull by water. On the other hand use a few layers and you are way over the strength you actually need, so using a more expensive higher modulus fabric would be a waste of money. Maybe a few layers of cheaper carbon, or carbon in combo with other materials or even core would give a better ballance of properties.

I tried a few times and didn't have the nack of glassing. You would probably have to have a mold for the outside if you want it smooth, I built an awesome road bike and used a homemade outside mold but it broke at the chainstay. The coolest bike I made was with hollowood tubing and custom internal alum lugs to hold it together, woried about the weight so I built it trying to reduce weight and it came out wimpy and weighing about one pound, could have beefed it up.

Join the framebuilder's list (or www.frameforum.net) and ask this question. I remember somebody posting a carbon tubing supplier there if you're interested in doing one in that fashion. I've considered building a carbon/stainless lugged frame using tubing; I don't really want to do layups at home.

Glassing is pretty easy (if i just forget the first few boats alltogether). I would suggest doing some practice with glass cloth if one lacked the skill, before turning one's attention to carbon, only because of the latter's expense.

One nice thing about carbon is that it doesn't impose a lot of heat. Therefore well made parts may not need the subsequent attention of one K's worth of frame prep tools since they didn't distort in the first place.

You can purchase a Dedacciai carbon kit from Joe Bringheli in Parma Ohio. You could do worse than starting with something like this for your first carbon frame.

If I'm going to do a frame, weight most likely won't be a huge matter, as it will either be a mountain or track frame. Stiffness is the key for this.
I'm actually a body man, so I have some experience with this type of stuff, I think it's fun.

So, what I was thinking, was using a 3K carbon (which is what Brano Meres(sp?)) used on his mountain frame, according to him. And in between layers, adding 6K in the high stress areas. I want to have simple but stiff square-shaped chain stays, and hopefully get a hold of some good aluminum and bond it into the seat stays, but only for the track frame for stiffness as Cannondale and Isaac do in their top-end frames.

But on the other hand, my coach's old coach (I think) is named Joe Bringheli and happens to live in Parma, Ohio.