Carbon Fibre Cornucopia: Chopsticks, Wallets and a Toilet Seat
The space-age material is now in your hands (and under your butt cheeks): the self-confessed car nut whose online store sells nothing but carbon fibre.
Carbon fibre is a buzzword in industrial design, and with good reasons. It’s impressively light, incredibly strong, and it looks pretty damn cool too. Once, you could only use them if you’re building something to blast into space. Now, you can use carbon fibre for, well, eating chicken tikka masala.
David Pityluk from Virginia, USA, runs a website that sells nothing but carbon fibre products. The self-confessed “car nut” first found a carbon fibre wallet online, and that led him on a treasure hunt of more carbon fibre goodies around the web. Soon, he decided to create his own store that sells chopsticks, wallets, tissue boxes, and even a toilet seat. But is carbon fibre really all that?
“Absolutely, it really is the future!” David says. “Right now the material is too expensive, which is why generally we only see it being used in high-end cars like Ferrari and Lamborghini. But eventually we’ll see it in the everyday car.
The material is extremely strong and lightweight – plus it looks great! – that adds up to huge benefits in fuel consumption.” The major obstacles now are carbon fibre’s high cost and lack of an automated manufacturing process, which probably explains why something like a carbon fibre pen costs US$34.95 (Rs 1,571 ). We’ll stick to Parryware, thanks.
www.carbonfibergear.com
From the April 2011 issue of FHM India.
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