If you cut blanks, make sure you wax the ends and cut them plenty thick. You want them drying slowly to minimize cracking from the ends and surface checking (although excessively quick drying may not be too much a problem in Mississippi.) But if you set back some blanks, and then they don't work out, you are not out anything.
I say give it a try. My father make jewelry boxes/pistol cases out of a tree that fell in his parents' yard and gifted them to his kids and grandkids.
