Wade,
As Todd says, spruce is used on Weiss-type guitars and modern builders such as Lance White of Lazy River Guitars makes a Spruce Walnut one. For my first one I wanted a more bluesy sound and had to use wood I had available and used Sapele. I was going to do Martha's with a Lutz top from Shane but she is a huge Ben Harper and John Butler fan and wanted the bluesy sound too so I'm using some Cuban Mahogany I had. One day I'll do a spruce topped one. Spruce gives a more "mellow" sound. There are some sound clips here of different Weiss woods.
Todd,
I used ordinary reverse kerfed linings in the neck. What I have done on both though is to use off-cuts of cf rods from neck inserts to make zig-zag patterns, routing out pockets in the linings and epoxying them in - not a great picture but you should be able to see what I mean:
I think of the neck a bit like a box-girder, and most of the strength is needed to stop the strings pulling it in on itself, so paid most attention to the upper bout bracing and hoped these cf rods would give stiffness in the right place for little weight. I probably should have done the same in the bottom of the neck - putting cf rod zig-zags there as well. You could also put cf rods across the neck sides I suppose like kite-spars. The fretboard is part of the neck strength as well so although I thought about using lighter more figured woods, I choose ebony in both cases. I think the trick with these guitars is to get them as light as you can but give them strength in the right places. I think modern building techniques will help a lot - I think from looking at plans of the old ones that they were overbraced. Time will tell of course but so far so good.
For the fingerboard I left the fret markers out at the 3rd fret and the two 12th frets and drilled through and used cocktail sticks to position and clamped as shown in the photo. I decided to use hhg as I thought of the fb as an acoustic coupling brace so the trickiest bit was getting the timimg right so that the hhg didn't gel on me. I probably should have added 2 smaller clamps at the soundhole end- one on each side:
Lance and Serge - thanks.
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. Here it is with the box closed and bound - lots of sanding and scraping still to do. It's a bit of a Salsa/fruit&nut guitar. Salasa: the top is some pale Cuban Mahogany, the peg head inlay is Old Rio rosewood as will be the bridge. Fruit&nut: the back and sides are English cherry from a neck blank Russell gave me, and the peghead and bindings are English walnut. The fretboard will be ebony.
Funny thing is though out of force of habit I put a spruce strip down the middle 