Jaager

I have found Bradford pear to be an excellent wood to work with.

Closed pores, holds edge well, relatively dense, drys OK, does not check too badly.  Nice color.

Holly will be a problem.  Once dry, it is an excellent wood.  It can be used for any part.

Drying it is the problem.

It will host a fungus - blue mold.  You need to get dry as quickly as possible to keep the mold from ruining the wood.

My suggestion.

1) Coat the cut ends and knots.  Latex paint will do.  Parafin, varnish, just block the uneven rapid water loss. 

2) Get it into billets 1-2 inches thick as quickly as possible. Debark the billets.  A band saw with a powerful motor is an efficient tool to do this.  Fix the log to a wooden sled to get perpendicular cut planes on 2 sides - then you can use the cut surfaces against the fence and table.  Hooly is very hard.  It will labor an under powered saw.  The Wood Slicer bandsaw blade is as good as it gets, but you may wish to use standard blades for the green wood if you have a breakage problem -

3) You can make your own kiln for not much cost.

     A box can be made using foam insulating sheathing that comes in a 4x8 sheet. I used 1 inch with a foil surface on one side. I got Home         Depot to cut it into  4x 16 inch pieces - my 350Z is not much good as a truck.  They sell 2x2 foam pieces for projects that will work for the 2 ends.  I built my box into a shelf for support but duct tape will probably do.

4) Heat -  200-300 watts from incandescent light bulbs will do for my sized box.  I put the foil surface on the inside.

5) Moisture removal - Amazon sells computer heat exhaust fans for ~$10.  One is enough.  Match a DC power supply to the fan -  I understand higher is OK, lower will burn out the fan ~$10.

6) Sticker the billets - 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch strips cut from a furring strip will do .  You need good air circulation arround all sides of the billets,

7)  A month should do more than enough.  Amazon also sells a moisture meter for ~$12 if you wish to follow the progress.

I air dryed the Bradford pear and it did OK.  I kiln dried Holly and Dogwood.   Holly wants to warp and twist as it dries.   If you start with a 4 foot long billet and  it twists 45 degrees over that length - well - a 6 inch piece will be relatively straight and at 1/4 scale that is a 24 foot board.

A useful Titebond dispencer -  go to a local pharmacy and ask for a 10ml oral syringe.  The plunger can be removed and the barrel filled.  If done carefully and with the help of gravity - the plunger replaced and air expelled.  The end can be easily covered - I use electrical tape - (the gauge is different from injection syringes so those needles and caps do not fit -  but then the bore is large enough to work with the glue's viscosity. 

I think the limit on dilution v bond strength is 10% water.

The tighter the clamping - the stronger the bond.

For rigging and flags - take a look at Lineco -Neutral pH Adhesive (Amazon)  a book binders PVA glue that should help minimize the effects of O2 and UV light.

If you are going to use the plans for Prince from a Euro kit, there is a factor to check.

A while back, I was investigating 17 century vessels.  It was just after Dean's Doctrine was first printed. I ran thru the exercise of designing a ship based on the directions in the book.  In that era the length of a ship was based on "touch". Essentially, this is the part of the keel that actually touches the baseline.  At a later time this was changed to "length between perpenticulars" or "length of gundeck" (which is essentially the same thing).

The reported length of Prince would be based on touch.

The plans seem to have used that value as though it was LBP.  The plans as drawn are forshortened by not including the radius of the stem and the cant of the stern.

One problem to think about - tea and coffee are acidic and contain tannins - they may react with the cloth over time and break it down.  Woodcraft and similar sell wood finishing products - especially water based and alcohol based dyes.  They tend to be more stable over time.

Penn State Ind.  has several - specific to popular machines and universal:

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/universal-duplicator.html

Take a look at aqueous or alcohol based wood dye and use clear over that.  Stain is essentially paint. 

Depending on the wood, you may wish to prep the surface by applying water ( with maybe 10% TiteBond or WeldBond ) and scrape or sand the raised grain.

Only the ends and the knots (if any)  The wood needs to dry.   Wood is similar to a bundle of soda straws.  Water migrates more quickly out of the open ends.  If you stop all water loss by coating the sides, fungus will thrive in the environment that you produce.

If the ends dry more quickly than the bulk =  wood is majority water when qreen,  as the water leaves, the cells shrink.  If one part drys more quickly - it shrinks more quickly and the stress causes the wood to split (check).   The goal is uniform drying.  And drying to stay ahead of fungus.  Oak has tannins so it is likely more forgiving in this reqard than is Apple and especially Holly.

 You need good good air circulation around the log, so sticker it.  You can use pieces of furring strips or scrap lumber for the stickers.

Watch the ends and recoat if checking starts.

For outdoor drying, the old rule for seasoning was 1 year/inch.

You can get a moisture meter from Amazon for ~ $10 ( or atleast I did. ) and follow the drying process.

Thick paint - wax - varnish -  you just need to slow the loss of water from the ends

You should probably remove the bark -  it speeds water loss and there are insects that lay eggs under bark and their larvae bore into the wood.

Your better option - billet the wood into 1-2 inch thick pieces and sticker them to dry.

One thing about oak ;  Even modeling at the high end of scale 1:50   - the grain is way off scale and the pores are pot hole size.

If you split the stock for the yards from a plank - using a fro-like tool - the yards will be less likely to bend or twist - as this follows the grain - something a dowel is hit or miss with.

On  a theoretical basis, if you are setting up a line for masking tape, would using a laser pointer instead of a pencil help do the job without leaving a mark?

What I remember from long ago = the Y axis of the sail you are furling would be much less than its full size if hung.  The material used is much thinner - at that time Silkspan - which is no longer made - was suggested.

You may consider this from Amazon

Neutral pH Liquid Adhesive
 

Materials for mounting repairing cleaning and preserving.-All products are acid-free with a neutral PH.-For professional framing hobby or office use.-Easy to use polyvinyl acetate (PVA) formula is fast setting and re-moistenable with water.-No more drips, spills, or sticky messes to clean up.-Ideal for prints photos postcards or any paper item.-Adhesive was formulated specifically for preservation materials and will not become brittle with age

0.025 is a #72 drill   

I got a box of pins that are an easy #71 and tight #72 at a local Farbic Hut.

They also have Mylar sheets at a reasonable price.

I thought MicroMark had brass lill pins , but theirs are steel.

Start here:

http://stuccu.com/s/Brass+Pins?duk=brass%2Bpins&mt=b&keyword=%2Bbrass%20%2Bpins&ap=1s2&cid=27078024269&caid=51e62d65a7e09215709dc96b&netid=1&network=s&aaid=51e62d65a7e09215709dc973&gclid=CM7c2peWl7kCFa9eQgodSAEAFw

Try Amazon,  I got mine years ago - from Model Shipways when they only had solid hull kits

I agree with Janos.  A bench top 9 inch band saw with an 1/8 inch blade will do excellent scroll sawing without vibrating or trying to pull the work piece up.  I have the MicroMark model - which seems to be a generic and is Tiawan or China made.  MicroMark no longer has it in their catalog.  One addition I made was to add Carter Products Stabilizer.  It allows a tighter cutting radius and replaces the guides.  The MicroMark saw has a 3/8 inch mounting port and the Stabilizer STD-2 has a 5/16 inch post, but 2 pieces of K&S brass tubing 5/16 ID and the next a 3/8 OD made an adequate bushing once a hole was cut for the set screw.  Comprable saws seem to run about $140 +/-  the Stabilizer is $ 75 .   An additional expense would be replacing the guides with Cool Blocks.  If the thrust bearings seize up - they are readily availible on line or from a local bearing supplier - being a commonly used item.

The band saw has other uses - repeative cross cutting being one,  but I do not think serious resawing is something a 9 inch saw will do very well.  The motor is ~ 0.3 HP.   I had a fit getting through 3 inch green dogwood and 5 inch green holly with a 0.6 HP saw.   

I asked myself this same question. If you wish to build and keep several models and wish to use the same scale for each to show their relationship to each other, usually some compromise must be made as regards display space.   Scale differences are usually discussed as 2D values and a model is a 3D entity.

Doing primative math I derived the following ratios - 1:48 being the traditional standard.

Scale     Length     Volume

1:48       1              1

1:60       0.8           0.5

1:76       0.6           0.25

1:96       0.5           0.125