Congratulations, Twizzstyle! You are very ambitious. If you look at this link about Peter Mix's New Millennium mandolin, you'll find some help. There's more available, too. Search here under Mix, MAD, carbon, etc. http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin....=carbon
Flat-topped mandolins need not just tone bars but more serious bracing, or they work sort of like a trampoline (or the head of a banjo). Given that you don't want to remove the top, there are several things you could do to improve the tone a lot. I think it should be possible for you to glue in braces. I don't like to use epoxy on this stuff as it creeps, but maybe it's what you need to use. But Titebond will probably stick to rough CF and resin. Anyway, you could make a couple relatively substantial tone bars, put glue on them, slide them through the F holes, and clamp them in place. These would run from the neck block to the tail block, or nearly. You could also glue in a couple transverse braces--more common for flat-top mandolins from the 20s. Actually, they could run underneath the F holes without problem, though they'd show. If you want, you could even cut a hole in the side and slide them through. Clamping through the F holes would be easy. (This is the sort of clamp to use: http://www.stewmac.com/shop....et.html ). Doing this after the top is attached is a lot easier with a flat top.
Another approach that I've never seen would be to attach the braces to the top of the top, exposed, on each side of the strings. Pretty radical and perhaps pretty ugly. You could also quite easily just saw off most of the top and attach a new top with braces. But I'd try gluing in braces first.
Good luck.
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