lamination... definatly not worth buying the 50" sheets... or the 48" for that matter... get 4 , 36x3 inchers and laminate like this... the red line is the cut path.
That works for skins, but using a plain butt joint in a fuse side isn't a really good idea. Butt joints (as in skins) are the weakest of all joints, and fuse sides have to tolerate stresses much higher than the stresses imposed on skins.
yup, the end of the wood is Very very porus and soaks up all the glue making for a very weak bond. however a diagonal joint like the 1 i showed eliminates this problem because it allows you to glue to cross grain and creates a much larger gluing area.