I-beam question

[bornofmud]

I was wondering if I were to cut a 1/4" piece from the center of my riser wood, and glue two 1/8" thick pieces of phenolic on either side

so looking at the piece from what will be the back or belly it would be

1/2" --- 1/8" --- 1/4" --- 1/8" --- 1/2"
wood - phenolic -wood- phenolic - wood

Would the middle piece of wood function as an I-beam if I didn't flip the grain?  

I've already done the cut across the back, so my piece is cresent shaped and thus I cannot flip the grain of the ibeam piece and keep the same shape.  However, the wood is really beautiful and I didn't want the whole sight window part to just be black phenolic.  Hope that makes sense.

Thanks!

[chackworth3]

What kind of wood is it?  The phenolic should help reinforce it

[bornofmud]

It's macassar ebony.  Seems dense but brittle to me. I found a source for g10 pheno too, which should help.  Just want to make sure that the center piece of wood is also adding something to the strength, if it isn't I'll just buy thicker pheno and do a normal center beam. I was told that a wood Ibeam with no pheno (and just flipping the grain) adds 40% more strength to the riser section.  Was hoping the way I'm doing this would still have that effect.  Next time I'll just flip the grain and it won't be a problem haha.

Well actually, I would prefer to not flip the grain, think it would look better with a smooth transition through the phenolic layer in the sight window.  So if it does funtion as an I beam, i'd probably keep doing it that way.