I have a battle axe and some wood. How do I make them into planks?
You need the workshop to do that. I think your only choice (besides restarting the game) is to turn cheat codes on in Preferences and add them from there.
According to the fan-made guide, you might be able to get them from the junkyard as well, but I could not find anywhere to do so.
EDIT: Now that I remember, Rose gets access to Bernard's shop when he's not available. Not sure if she also gets Logan's?
So I got frustrated since I needed Bernard to turn back in order to finish "the full moon" event and "Rat problems", but I didn't have neither workshop nor prison to do so.
Eventually, I clicked on Logan's shop and saw Rose has access to their stuff, so I managed to get planks from her.
Needless to say, I managed to progress thankfully!