Joe, I use alternating dark and light wood for my coaming lip and tried to use pine. The problem I has that even with fairly good qualiy pine it tended to split when I tried to bend it. It was 1/8 " thick. Any thinner and I'd have to line up 12 strips for the coaming and that would be too much work. So I ended up using ash ( left over from my external stems) which was VERY plyable as you know, for my light color wood. Poplar might be another tight grain wood that might work. But if you are going have to buy something, buy ash. My dark color wood was walnut and surprisingly I had no problem bending it around the coaming.

DAVE