Jaager

It is not cheap, but you could used a Cool Block that is rectangular instead of wood.

If this works similar to a band saw, then the thicker the wood being cut - the fewer TIP the blade cutting it should have.  When the gullet of a tooth gets filled, it cannot cut anymore.

Paraffin, latex paint, oil based paint, varnish, shellac, polyurethane finish,  just something to keep water from leaving the wood from the cut ends of the fiber straws instead of the sides.  Wood preservative would probably be very bad. 

Wood really is like a bundle of soda straws.  The function of the straws is to transport water.  Water leaves so much more rapidly from the cut ends than thru the sides of the straws that stresses develop from uneven water loss and the wood cracks and splits (checking).  What you want to do is block the open ends.  Keep an eye on the painted ends and reapply the coating if checking starts to occur.

I think bowing and twisting is more a function of the plane of the cut of the billets -  with quarter sawn being less prone to this and  every species of tree having its own degree of amount.  Leaving the wood as a log to dry - there would be much less bowing and twisting of the final planks, but a much longer drying time and often much more checking and splitting - sometimes making it difficult to get anything useful.

Almost any wood can be air dried, Birch and Beech, I am pretty confident can be.

The main one that I know to be a problem is Holly.  There is an extremely aggressive fungus - Blue Mold - that can invade the green wood faster than it air dries.  This species needs to be kiln dried. 

A kiln is just a hot box with an exhaust function to remove the water vapor. Since we are not making full size furniture, the size of the pieces can be what cabinet makers think is scrap and cutoffs.  The temp and exhaust rates can be much more forgiving with smaller pieces.  End grain still needs to be sealed to reduce checking, but that is also the situation with air drying.

The quick and dirty approach would be to do wood, solid hull lamination - interior hollowed out - or not - using :

White Pine, Basswood, Yellow Poplar, or Tupelo.

There are several species of wood that go by mahogany. 40 years is not that long ago as far as substitutes for the traditional species of mahogany being slipped in, so based on name alone, it would be difficult to determine just which species it is.

As far as modeling use,  both Oak and Mahogany are open pore and the grain of Oak does not scale down to 1:50 - 1:100 range all that well.  If you intend to seal and paint, both are suitable for frame structures, planking, deck structures.  You would need to fill the pores before the finish paint to get a smooth finish.

If you are contemplating harvesting and being your own sawyer and millwright, I offer the following:

A band saw is much better suited to get from round stock to finished planks. Just make sure the motor is powerful enough - 1.5 HP at least. 

In general it takes 1 year for a 1 inch thick plank to air dry.  So If you get round stock into 2 inch billets, it is ready to use in 2 years.

If you intend to go traditional POF with as much natural wood as possible,  Investigate which species of wood are grown in Northern Ireland.  You want closed pore, hard, tight grain and if possible low contrast between Spring and Summer bands.

Fruit wood - Apple, Pear, Plum, Crab Apple, are ideal.

Maple is excellent and what you call Sycamore, is a member of the maple family (Acer).  In North America - what we call a Sycamore, is in an entirely different family and has a less desirable grain pattern.  

I am guessing that there is a history of formal gardens where you are. You may be able to get some Buxus sempervirens (real boxwood).

There are species of smaller trees that grow in your hedgerows - not large enough to be commercial product, but certainly worth your  time and exploration.

Beech and Birch are usable species and may be available from local hardwood sellers.

The direction of the grain!

This probably the reason for the fuzzies.

Any torque and the piece would snap.

The appearance - if not sealed and painted, is unnatural.

The grain should follow the long axis of the piece - and horizontal.

You will not get as many units from the milled stock, but just mill more stock pieces.

You may consider adjusting the 20mm guide.  The planking would probably work better if the land at the stem was lower - closer to mimicing the trac of a waterline. 

I also think it is 1850's vintage. 

With the purpose of starting a discussion, I make some observations based on little evidence:

The masts and yards seem to be over scale.

The hull lines look clipper-like, but with only topgallants on all three masts, it is more like a coastal packet.

I see no evidence of deck hatches, how would she carry any cargo?

The forecastle and catheads look twice as large - like the hull is 1/8" scale and they are 1/4" scale.

The bulwark height does not match scale with deckhouse size.

Scientific kits had pre-made shrouds with ratlines, but you would be better served mounting the shrouds individually and doing the ratlines in place.

This may not be a kit at all and not made from plans of a real vessel.

There are several books that cover this period - Lever, Nares, Meade, Biddlecombe, Brady   - 

This vessel is contemporary with the clippers and the rigging would be rope. 

I think that the rigging would be the same as the 1850's clippers and packets.  The steam is the add-on.

They probably did not totally trust the steam, and on a long voyage - given the efficiency of the engines - could carry no cargo but fuel coal if they used the engines for anything but getting into a harbor or a dead calm.

I made my own sanding table. 

Base and two sides 3/4 ply

Table is 12" x 12"  3/4 ply with 3" hole in center.

I had this motor so I used it:

http://www.grainger.com/product/DAYTON-HVAC-Motor-3M083?searchQuery=3m083&nls=0&suggestConfigId=1

I wanted to be able to choose any grit abrasive so I have the sleeveless sanding drum kit  3", 2", 1", 3/4"

http://www.ptreeusa.com/abrasive_drums.htm

3 additional table tops are 1/4 ply with 2" , 1" and 3/4" holes

I mounted the motor using A23Z steel brackets like an old Erector Set project using nuts and screws:

http://www.homedepot.com/b/Building-Materials-Builders-Hardware-Joist-Hangers/N-5yc1vZaqxb/Ntk-Extended/Ntt-brackets?Ntx=mode+matchpartialmax&NCNI-5

A free sample of Armstrong kitchen flooring provided a mounting pad for motor to cut down on noise and vibration.

The motor has a 5/16" shaft a either end ( so CW or CCW rotation, depending ).   The drums will mount on either a 1/4" or 3/8" shaft.  To adapt them to the 5/16" motor shaft, I made adaptors from 3/8" cold rolled steel rod and bored a 5/16" hole thru the center and drilled and tapped a set screw.  I used a lathe to do this.

Since it sands with the brain, I use it to sand outside as well as inside curves.

One question:  synthetic fibers usually do not have fuzzies and have no affinity for water, so why wax them?

In most POB kits, the spacing of the body moulds are too far apart to support a thin single run of planking.  A first layer of what looks to be poor quality wood (open pore, course grain, easy to splinter) is supposed to provide what is essentially a simulation of a solid hull to receive the layer of outer planking.  Even with this, it would be useful to glue laminations of veneer to the inside of the first layer (perpendicular to the run of planking)(at a scale width of 6-12 inches)(laminate in place) to receive the treenails of the actual planking. Before the mid 17th century (at least) the futtocks were fit to the inside of the planking instead of the reverse later.

If you wish a single layer:

the actual planks would probably need to be thicker than what is provided.

the space between the moulds should have support material (at the least 50% wood with the open space not wide).

Other tools to try  : a small hand plane - needle files.

There is another way:

Start with one size of brass or copper wire.

Use a draw plate to get whichever smaller diameter that you need.

We may use draw plates to make bamboo or wooded treenails, but the original purpose is to make wire.

You need blade tension to be what is recommended and no tighter. Tighter will not stop wander, but it will shorten the life of your blade.

Make sure that you take the tension off of your blade when you are done for the day.

Here is a resawing guide:   http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/library/Slicing%20Wood.pdf

Yes.   The species I posted are the ones traditionally used for furniture.

Cherry is almost always Black Cherry.   

Maple -  Hard = Sugar = Rock  all are names for the same species.

Both are a joy to work with.  They are hard and will work your cutting tools, but you are also less likely to overdo  a cut.

What you want is the choice that specialty wood workers are not after-  clear straight grained.

Unless you are doing a stunt or are making a base - you do not want Tiger, Bird's Eye, Spalted, Burl.

These are grain effects (or a fungus infection) - they have no relationship to what timber scaled down 1:50 / 1:100 would look like.

Soft Maple is being sold in some places - unless you are familiar with it and know you want it for some purpose, do not get it.

Too bad you cannot harvest your own.

Of all wood, Apple is my favorite.

I harvested the wood from a neighbor's fruit cherry tree that had blown down in return for cutting the rest up for curbside pickup.  It is hard and the grain is low contrast, but the color is yellow with a greenish tinge.

From your list, my favorites are also the least expensive:

Rock Maple (Acer saccharum)

Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

Both hard, tight grain with low contrast, closed pore.

See if there are any hardwood saw mills in your area.

If you can harvest your own, look for

Apple

Bradford Pear

Other fruit wood - Crab Apple, Pear, Plum

Dogwood

Washington Hawthorn

Holly is good, but very tricky - harvest in Winter and kiln dry quickly - otherwise Blue Mold will ruin it.

I do not think Peach is any good

Scroll saws vibrate- the blade moves up/down - the work wants to vibrate with it. 

As an alternate way to get to your goal - consider a 9 inch bench top band saw.   With an 1/8 " blade - pretty tight turns can be cut ( the 1/16th" blades seem to have disapeared from the market ).  The cut is a constant down.

 Which saw?

There are many brands avialable.

If the saw uses 59 1/2 inch blades, replacements are easy to find.

To get the needed tracking a Carter Products "Band Saw Stabilizer Guide System for Scroll Cuts" is almost a requirement, so a brand that can fit a Carter stabilizer is almost a requirement.

RYO1 - For use with Ryobi 9" saws.

STD2 - Fits many common 9" and 10" band saws with 5/16" shaft.  (I have one that was sold by MicroMark with larger shaft, that I was able to retro fit using telescoping K&S brass tubing as bushings.)

STD1 - Fits most stock OEM guides with block configuration

A 9 inch band saw is a fairly light duty tool.  I would not depend on doing very thick resawing with it.  The motor is not powerful enough to take a load much over 2 inches (I am guessing here.)  Highland's Wood Slicer blade does not come smaller than 70".

You could always use this as an excuse to venture into scratch building and make the masts and yards out of wood.  Just start with board stock and not dowels.  If you split out the masts and yards along the grain, it is not as likely to warp.

If you are going to detail the interior, you could give some consideration to doing the hull POF.

The traditional boxwood is buxus sempivirens.  It is the ornimental shrub often seen in formal gardens.  It is slow growing, 30 foot tall and 8 inch dia would be a rare find.  The wood is very hard, tight grained, very little contrast, and usually a light yellow.  Everything else is an attempt to cash in on the demand for something that is now hard to obtain.

Doing a trip back in imagination, the old guys were probably using the best wood they could get that was available.  The wood was probably sawed out of round stock using hand saws and hand planes. They were probably a minor market for cabinet makers and instrument makers. (rulers and such). If they had our selection, I wonder if they would be as limited in their choice of wood variety?

Do you have the Model Shipways building manual for the kit by Erik A R Ronnberg Jr.? There are some rigging details in it.

I have two thoughts about this:

If you are not going to bend the sailing - even furled - most of the running rigging for handling the sails could be left off.  The rigging would probably be taken below with the sails.  ( A sheet is the line that holds the free corners of a sail taught against the force of the wind - the two bottom corners of a square sail,  the distal bottom corner of a gaff sail, and the bottom corner of a staysail.)

A rigging diagram for most any schooner near its age would be a good guide.  The pattern would probably be uniform.  In the dark, in a storm, half lit on rum, seamen from multiple countries - you would not want to have to guess which line proformed which function.  It would need to be the same vessel to vessel over a long period of time - generation to generation.

The following book should answer your questions:

This is not an endorsement of the vendor, just the book: http://www.amazon.com/American-Built-Clipper-Ship-1850-1856-Characteristics/dp/0071358234/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=149PENCFDSR2QBC446BM

Maybe not - I misread your vessel as Wm Webb's Young America, a clipper.

For the Holly,  you would need to factor in the kerf if you cut your own from a sheet, but you would be able to match the width to that of each vessel.  Being a bit compulsive, I  would order twice the amount I calculate as needed. 

For the Pear, with a sheet, you may be able to get more efficient use of the wood since you should be spilling the plank shapes.  You may be able to use the curve from a previous plank as the edge of the current one. 

Spilling = cut a piece of 3x5 or 4x6 index card to the shape that will fill the plank opening without any lateral bends - so that it lays in naturally.  Not often will it be a true rectangle.  More likely sort of parallel shallow curves, but the width tends to taper a bit.  Use the card board pattern to cut  the planks for each side. One hopes that bilateral symmetry is occuring, but adjustments as you go should correct a digression while it is minor.  If you calculate (say) six stakes between a pair of ribbands, rather than cutting all six, measure 1/6 th for the first, lay it in, measure 1/5 th for the next, etc.