Hello Smiggity,
For the wood order, you've found the first part of being able to place an order. All orders are placed in a queue and are done in order of the highest price per wood. You can look up the villages in the Encyclopedia (or just right-click the village name on the map) to see what orders are currently running. If your order is the highest price, then any players chopping wood in that village, will be adding wood to your order.
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As for your second question, this is based on weapon skills. Once any of the 6 weapon skills reaches 50, your character will be displayed in combat gear in the clan window and the encyclopedia. It's not possible to switch this manually.