: I built a canoe this summer with carbon fiber on the inside.
: Recently, a wind storm picked it up off the ground where it was
: stored and bashed it up against a tree. The wind was bad enough
: that it tossed a couple of sawhorses halfway across the lawn.
: Where the boat hit the tree, the glass on the outside cracked,
: which I would have expected. On the inside, the carbon fiber
: split and fractured. I've never seen this much damage on the
: inside of a boat from one impact even from times that I landed
: my wooden kayak on a boomer and needed to do repairs because of
: that. I'm not sure I'd use carbon fiber on the inside again
: without covering it with glass.

: Thoughts?

As others have stated, carbon fiber has some interesting characteristics. It can make for extremely light, stiff parts. That's one of the reasons that it's used in automotive applications for aerodynamic parts. Stiffness comes with a price - anything stiff is more likely to break from impact than something more flexible. Carbon fiber has a strong tendency to shatter when it breaks, as all the fibers woven together fail in tandem.

StephenHJ