Carbon Fiber Layups

I had wanted to experiment with carbon fiber to make a flexible skateboard deck. This was inspired by a friend’s flexible skateboard deck that was advertised as being carbon fiber. Not until after experimenting did I know this was not the case or at least only tangentially true.

The layups that I made were far stiffer than the skateboard deck and far more brittle. After doing some more investigating, only a cosmetic external layer was placed on the top and bottom of the layup. The majority of the deck was composed of basalt layers, a significantly more pliable composite than carbon fiber.