Some of the most beautiful fruit wood I have seen and worked with is pear. I have a Stacey pear from St. Lawrence Nursery that would work beautifully for this. It is extremely vigorous with no disease and has a strong apical dominance. The fruit is not that great. I have worked with certain hybrids and some of these are worth planting but the common wild pear can be limbed up to form a straight trunk easily. I have some apricot walking sticks that I polished. This is one hard wood. Really went through the sand paper to get them smooth. I doubt you could grow timber apricots but with judicious pruning you might be able to form a nice straight 4-6 ft log in a period of 50 years or so. (Minus the borers) I've seen old apricots but they tend to split and hollow out over time.