Oh hai.. lol
Mine was/is one piece wenge 2"thick, with a 3/4" cap. I'll post a vid at the end of this post for reference.
Doing things in the wrong order is always the biggest challenge of a first build I've found.
Hand sawing the block is valid. I'm thinking of buying some steel bars and bolting them together with washer spacers to make a mitre block, so you can really put some muscle in to it.
Hand planing the boards before gluing them would have probably been quite therapeutic..
Just thinking outside the box a little. If you wanted to go the inexpensive over complicated and lazy route.
You could saw it in half so it will fit through a hobbyist planer thicknesser, then joint it back together