I have a bit of a conundrum, maybe? I sourced a large piece of 8/4 hard maple that appears to be flatsawn. My purpose is to make a try plane about 28" long out of this wood. I've been reading up a bit about grain direction for plane construction from a billet and the consensus seems to be that the grain should run more or less horizontally along the side of the plane.
My piece of maple is about 7" wide. Would there be any disadvantage to flattening the board, ripping it in half and laminating the halves on top of each other to get the desired height? With this arrangement the grain along the sides would run horizontally, but I'd like to make sure I wouldn't be creating instability or structural weakness by face laminating the boards in this way. I'm still a long way off really understanding how wood works in different orientations and would appreciate the input - even if said input is to find different wood!