Well, I wanted something non-standard, and I didn"t have enough ebony for a 77cm fb anymore. In those days carbon fibre was still a bit of an up & coming construction material, and as I had some experience with building surfboards when I was young, I figured lets give cf a try.
My fb uses long cf strands as filling material in the composite. The problem with that is that you don't want to cut through them (for shaping afterwards), so you have to make sure the strands lie within what will be the final shape - therefore you have to make a mold. While they look beautiful (in enough light, see pic), the strands actually only serve a purpose in withstanding tension... while a fingerboard is always under compression. The compressional load will be borne largely by the binding material (epoxy). I guess for that reason, and to allow shaping afterwards, Sound Composites seem to use cf powder as filling material (rather than strands), at least on the outer layers of their fb's (they do use strands for some of their tailpieces).
On the garapa fb: yes, it has a bit courser grain structure (see pic), certainly compared w/ ebony or cf, but that does not bother me. What you see in the pic was 'ebonized' (with iron), and finished with oil. But yes, if the grain structure would be a problem, or if wear is, you can flood the pores (I would go for an impregnating epoxy resin rather than cyanoacrylate).
Cheers, K.
