I happen to have a sample of the spandex carbon uni sleeve from Soller. It's nice stuff and I think it would be easy to sleeve a wooden stick with it. (thats what I got the sample for) The big question is how much? I know how to calculate the stiffness of a tube IF I know the material properties. With this stuff you end up with lines of carbon tow running parallel to each other which is great but as the sleeve stretches over different diameters the parallel lines of tow move closer or further apart. So what are the material properties of the layup? Don't know until you try it, I guess.
I had a long conversation with Meade Gougeon about carbon-wood composites. That is something thay have been doing for a long time. He is very much of the opinion that carbon and wood make a fantastic combination. The Gougeon brothers built a lot of giant wind turbine blades using wood and carbon. The cost savings of using the wood were apparently significant. They got large improvments in stiffness with relatively small additions of carbon. The problem is that you have to be pretty smart to get it right. Otherwise, what MIK describes will happen, where the carbon carries all the load and the wood just goes along for the ride.
Meade said that the key is to use the wood to prevent compressive failure and load the carbon in tension. That way very little carbon is needed since it is so strong in tension and the structure remains light and inexpensive because a lot of it is wood.
So who is smart enough to find the balance between wood and carbon to make the perfect yard? :oo: Or you can add a few mm to the outside wood dimension and be done with it :wink: