I have built two. They are sister cuts of koa from Notable Tonewoods - Ken cut the extra long pieces needed for tops and backs and sides. There are two good sets of Weissie plans, one is from StewMac, the other I think from the Guild (mine are put away, can go look this up for you). The Guild plans were supposed to be slightly more accurate, where there were differences I followed them.

There was also an article in American Lutherie a while back on building a Weissenborn. He did a slightly different bracing pattern from that shown on the old plans - angled tone bars more like a Martin (the old plans have ladder tone bars in between the X braces. I built one of mine with the traditional bracing, one with the angled bars. Since they are exactly the same wood and everything else that gave a chance to compare. I was building one of this for a friend, one for myself. The deal was that he could take the pick of the litter, I would keep the other one. With side by side playing we both liked the old bracing better but it is very subtle and if I only play mine I'm very happy with it.

Koa is the traditional wood but you see a lot of mahogany Weissenborns. They are named as "styles" - that is mostly how fancy the wood is, the rosette design and the binding. Traditional fancy Weissenborns have rope binding and rosettes - I bound mine in maple to contrast the koa.

Some minor things to think about. I bent the sides on my Fox bender. When I make a body mold the inside pieces become the bending mold. The head block is the end of the neck - think about how that fits into your mold and how you will attach it to the sides. The back of the head block curves to the back of the neck, make sure you have enough flat surface for your tuners. There are no frets but you will need to put fret markers on the board - I used maple inserted in the rosewood. You will want a uniformly flat neck with approximately 3/8 "action" the entire length. A tall nut and saddle will help with this (traditional saddle is a piece of fret wire, I used bone).

The usual pickup that you see people like Ben Harper and David Lindly use is a soundhole magnetic acoustic guitar pup - that is what we put in my friends (I don't remember the brand). Mine has no pickup. Its important to know that a case will fit your guitar, the Beard weissie case fits mine just fine.

I run medium strings with the first and second bumped up a couple more gauges (14 or 16 on top, I forget). I play almost exclusively in open D because I have a dobro for G. You can use some of the steel guitar tunings as well but D is nice for lots of styles of play.

A couple of pictures

The MIMF sells Weissenborn plans. They were copied from an original instrument IIRC so they would be fairly authentic to the originals.

http://www.mimf.com/old-lib/weissenborn_plans.gif

Freeman, apart from the fact that those are really nice looking guitars, there seems to be an awful lot of bracing. Are the bodies so big that they need such a lot of support?

Cheers Dave

I used this
weissenborn Plan twice.
I have downloaded this weissenborn free plans by Benjamin Tur, but in French.

http://free-stock-illustration.com/weis ... 1342548927

CAUTION - GOT A NORTON WARNING BLOCKING THAT LINK, DANGEROUS WEB PAGE

DID A SEARCH AND FOUND THIS LINK http://kralizec121.free.fr/Plans%20Aymaleo/Weissenborn_Edition-1.pdf

I don't want to talk you out of the build but your buddie could just throw a nut extender and a set of slightly heavier strings on some old flat top and start playing lap style. The round neck will slide around on his lap and the action might not be optimal but its a good way to give lap sliding a test run. Open D, open G and high bass G are all good tunings to noodle around with.