DIY RokStok in maple

[Mtnmilsurp]

For OP or anyone who knows, would a laminated piece of wood with alternating grain direction be more rigid and/or better? I'm certain it wouldn't be more attractive...

I have no experience with laminate but expect it would be more of a challenge to inlet precisely by hand. You’d constantly be running into glue and differing wood grain and density, no?

 

[Macintosh]

For OP or anyone who knows, would a laminated piece of wood with alternating grain direction be more rigid and/or better? I'm certain it wouldn't be more attractive...

More rigid, maybe a little, but not enough to matter.
Laminate will change less dimensionally compared to some wood…but a good air-dried eu walnut blank that is well sealed changes very little dimensionally. Probably not enough to matter for 99.9% of the people out there.
Strength…perhaps significant depending on the shape of the stock. The reason you dont see a lot of vertical-grip wood stocks is that its much, much harder to lay out the stock on a wood blank so the grain doesnt cross the wrist, which creates a major (and potentially catastrophic) weak point. For a VG stock a laminate of some sort might be a better choice for this reason. I believe the wood rockstock that will be commercially available is done as a sort of laminate—not lots of thin layers, but a inner layer with the two nice-looking slabs of wood on the outside. I highly suspect this is simply due to the grain runout in the wrist. Ive been toying with a build like this and would certainly be picky about the blank and might also set a couple pieces of threaded rod or a good-sized dowel in the wrist to avoid this issue.
“Better” is very subjective. Laminate is closer to a synthetic…ie lower maintenence, lower initial cost, etc. But laminate is generally heavier, may be harder to work on with hand tools, and short of a specialty layup like above doesn't look nearly as good. Depends on what you are after.