: Mike,

: 6 oz. carbon is a much thicker fabric than 6 oz. glass, so it has much more
: volume for soaking up resin. Said another way, they are not physically
: similar fabrics other than weighing the same amount per yard. There was an
: interesting article in Sail magazine several months ago which explained
: the advantages of various fabrics very well. One message of the article
: was that for most boat building applications, s-glass has strength,
: durability, and weight advantages over CF.

The popular twill weave is definitly a little thicker but the plain weave CF isn't significantly so.

5.7 oz. Twill weave CF is .010 thick
5.5 oz. Harness Satin is .009 thick
6.0 oz. plain weave E-Glass is .0093 thick
6.0 oz. plain weave S-Glass is .0089 thick
(data taken from US Composites site)

So by doing the math we wind up with .1008 Cubic inches more epoxy per square foot. Unless you are doing the whole boat that is pretty insignificant.

Most people are only using the CF to reduce the layering you would need when using regular glass so you are reducing the amount of epoxy used and saving weight while adding strength.

The real problem I had using the carbon was that you can't tell when it is wet out so you keep dumping more epoxy one it. Mine never went clear!

--KT--