You guys are complaining about the wood prices in March. You should see what 8/4 walnut is going for now. $15 bd ft!
I ran 730 sq ft of hickory, on our Weinig molder, to replace the floor in part of our house a year ago. We don't get a lot of call for hickory but I like the variations in color and the fact that it is quite hard. I retired from my woodworking business but still have access to all the equipment. Will be making new kitchen cabinets to be installed in June. Wife hasn't decided what face material yet. Boxes will be 3/4" melamine bd. CNC'd, 2mm PVC banding on an automatic bander. Doweled on a CNC bore and insert machine, case clamped. Drawers in same material clamped in a pneumatic drawer clamp. All the hardware attachment holes are put in by the CNC router. It's all the same system we use for commercial work. Rectangular parts not needing detailing are cut on the Schelling CNC beam saw. All machine code is downloaded directly to the machines from the office. The result is fast, accurate and strong. Plywood is rarely used because of poor thickness tolerances, core voids and not being flat.
The good old days of manual woodworking died a long time ago for production work. I still occasionally make a piece of furniture the old fashioned way. I'll hand grind shaper knives and do curved moldings just for the fun of it. We still have a full set of manual machines and I have hand tools.