Im not too surprised. The strength of plywood is well known in aero and racing circles. For parts like stringers plywood is used instead of fiberglass when higher stiffness is required.<p>Plywood is similar strength/weight as fiberglass which isn't too far off from carbon fiber.<p>The issue with all popular composite materials like fiberglass, carbon fiber, and plywood is that their strength is highly directional. It takes a lot of skill and testing to make sure your part is strong enough in all directions force will be applied.<p>There's some omnidirectional "mat" type materials you can get easily for fiberglass but you exchange the directional strength of weave for a non-directional but overall inferior strength of randomly oriented strands.