"I should've mentioned that these are not for guitars. Much smaller stuff like ukuleles and tenors etc..."
Even more reason to cut as you go - if you cut it all to size now you will be limited to building the small stuff you originally cut it for. Some instruments are long but not wide (dulcimers) and some are wide but not long (octave mandolins) and others are somewhere in between. There have been times I've used a set big enough for a triple O for a parlor guitar - the wood was already cut and in hand, ( a little bit of a loss). And there have been times I've had to "grow" a piece of wood to build a slightly larger instrument. It's good to have some wood processed and on the shelf, but one thing I've found is that the use I originally bought a board for often changes over time and ultimately is not what it is used for.
When processing wood from lumber what I was taught to do was to trim the end of the board an inch past any visible cracks and then give yourself another inch or two of length beyond the length of the finished piece you want to make from it. At the price of exotics there days I might be tempted to scale that back a little.
![[uncle]](./images/smilies/surrenderflagqv6.gif "Uncle")