* stanley trim plane arrived today (thank you to whomever suggested that)...came in pretty sharp out of the box but will touch it up on the wheel.

By 'wheel', do you mean grinding wheel a.k.a. bench grinder or a 'sharpening system'? I use a flat stone and a jig when I'm sharpening plane blades. YMMV (If you don't have sharpening stones, and the inclination and budget to get some, you can do a search on 'scary sharp' which is a method which uses wet sandpaper and a piece of glass.)

Any opinions there on which wood you would use for the station forms? My manual says use the CDX but this stuff I have is crap.

Are you going to staple into the forms? On my last few boats, I've used laminated pine shelving from HD. It's a bit expensive, but is excellent for holding staples. I tried Baltic Birch as an experiment (not on a set of molds) but I found it too hard - if I drove the staples into it, they wouldn't remove easily. Plywood with voids and heavy particle board aren't worth it for me.

Solid wood forms will change with humidity changes, but I don't take that long to get a boat stripped, usually, and besides, I don't think it would matter a great deal at the level of precision in a kayak build.