The timber bottleneck in building sailing warships

What most limited sailing-warship construction in time and expense?

The supply, gathering, and seasoning of suitable timber was the overwhelming time constraint.

Money could accelerate yard work, but it could not instantly supply mature and properly seasoned oak. Suitable trees might need roughly two centuries of growth before harvest. The timber then had to be gathered and seasoned before shipwrights could use it, and the surviving dockyard at Chatham makes that long preparation visible in construction timelines. The biological and material lead time therefore dominated the schedule even when a state could fund labour and dockyard work.