I would listen to Blackhawk's advice. He has made way more molles than I have. As far as ordering the hickory online goes, if it is within your budget and you have a local HD you can return the boards to, I would order 5 and hope that at least one or two of them would be clean, straight grain, and knot free. Then you could just return the rest. If all are unacceptable, you could return them all.