The thing is, If you were to use Mahogony wood to carve the prop, It can have a very straight grain and that would not be an issue. Maple can have pretty heavy figuring and would be difficult to
hide and make look like full scale. I have a machine that slices skins out of solid stock. I have quite a large inventory of material and could get you some very clean 1\8" Mahogany skins. It should take around 7-9 skins face glued to get what you want. I made a dummy static prop this way last summer for my Fokker. Those were laminated out of Walnut and Maple. Was really pretty easy and looks great. Mahogany will also be easier to carve than Maple.

At the end of the day (acutally a couple of days), here's what I've ended up with. The first shot shows the bare wood prop, the second the prop after treatment with pre-stain then mahogany stain, and the last after several coats of a mahogany/walnut lacquer. The final step was to paint the blades with a Nelson's grey mixture (actually white+black+PC10).

Looks pretty nice Don