The conclusion was that carbon fiber is a substance all its own, with its own properties, something not easily comparable to other substances. For my own part, I’ve had difficulty grasping it; have generally assigned it to the realm of a super type of plastic.

It’s closer to metal.

When you bang it, it tings the sound of metal. It looked like it: black metal. It reminded me of those steel blue-metal paper clips with the chrome arms; I recall as a kid crushing one or two with pliers and they showed no effect until splitting-cracking: the sound and look of the CF lead me to expect it would behave similarly.

Considering it as a piece of bicycle frame, it was absurdly thin. Extremely light. It was hard as hell and it took a lot of force to show a tiny bit of compression to the end of the tube, or it might have been my imagination; otherwise powerful attempts to flex it seemed to cause nothing.

I quizzed them with many questions. Suppose I banged this piece as hard as I can? What if I had a hammer and hit it here? Does it dent? Bend? If I brought enough force to bear in order to cause it to fail, how would it fail?

The reaction was many smiles. The general answer: it would do nothing and never bend. Finally, it would fail totally, crack, spectacularly crack or shatter.

And for all of its apparent stiffness and hardness, the Cycle staff agreed with numerous articles I’ve read (including the Ducati piece Hugo) that CF absorbs vibrations very well; better than steel, titanium and aluminum.

Then, match that to the numerous warnings about CF bicycle frames, including Trek: if you bang it hard or crash, even if there is no apparent damage, don’t use the frame anymore.

Anyway, it made me think of the many experiences we all have over the years that create our conception of what a material is, how strong, durable, and ultimately, trustable. I’d like to take some CF sheets and tubes and bend them ’till they break, bang them with a hammer, whack things, pry things… There’s an alien quality to the stuff that some good old childish smashing would dispel by revealing its limits.

“This new form will have to be a complete concept – not just a mass of little impovements. It is hard to prove the advantages of wings by attaching them to a toad; they really do work best on a bird. To leap from a the toad to the bird is generally too radical a step for conservative business corporations. They have invested too much money in producing better toads.

The novel concepts, therefore, come from nutty individuals, many of whom seem to like change for its own sake. Because of this they can make mistakes that make even their good ideas appear laughable; consequently, these ideas must wait until traditional thinking is completely bankrupt. Then they are widely adopted and labeled “progress.”"

Those were the last 2 paragraphs. Some day, all that is going over my desk.