Jaager

My current favorite for crosscutting is
 
Japanese Curved-edge Mini Saw
Item # 3612
 
from StewMac .  As with other Japanese saws, it cuts on the pull stroke.  This works better for me than the Western push cut blades.  The curve makes it easier for me to place it where I want it.  Was not an intuitive aspect for me - a pleasant surprise was that.
 
The unfortunate part is that StewMac is out of stock - too many luthiers love it? 
I also have the saw that Jim presents.  Broke it at the handle - bought another one - will just be more careful with it.

My current favorite for crosscutting is
 
Japanese Curved-edge Mini Saw
Item # 3612
 
from StewMac .  As with other Japanese saws, it cuts on the pull stroke.  This works better for me than the Western push cut blades.  The curve makes it easier for me to place it where I want it.  Was not an intuitive aspect for me - a pleasant surprise was that.
 
The unfortunate part is that StewMac is out of stock - too many luthiers love it? 
I also have the saw that Jim presents.  Broke it at the handle - bought another one - will just be more careful with it.

My current favorite for crosscutting is
 
Japanese Curved-edge Mini Saw
Item # 3612
 
from StewMac .  As with other Japanese saws, it cuts on the pull stroke.  This works better for me than the Western push cut blades.  The curve makes it easier for me to place it where I want it.  Was not an intuitive aspect for me - a pleasant surprise was that.
 
The unfortunate part is that StewMac is out of stock - too many luthiers love it? 
I also have the saw that Jim presents.  Broke it at the handle - bought another one - will just be more careful with it.

BTW, if anyone wants to drool over some nice hand tools, check out https://www.woodcraft.com/pages/japan-woodworker.

I have a pair of the small pull type Japanese saws. They are a bit expensive but I really like them. They have very thin stainless blades, sharp teeth and no set to the teeth so they cut very smoothly. Since they're pulled through the kerf they tend to cut straighter and the lack of set allows cutting very near to if not against finish surfaces.
 

 
Highly recommended.
 
Jim

An old method is to use a cutoff sharp end of a nail.  Drill a hole in the bottom end of the mast. Insert the cut end of the nail into the hole and have just enough of the point sticking out to seat into the "deadwood".  If you had cut the slot for the mast too deep, a longer piece of nail can be used to raise the mast a bit.
The size of the nail depends on how large of a hole is drilled into the end of the mast.

Ree's is the one that I wish that I had bought two copies. There are plans that fold out that need the binding removed for to get a proper scan.
It is Hutchinson that I do not find all that valuable.

Tea and coffee extracts contain organic acids which have a degrading effect on natural fibers over time.
A Walnut wood dye ( not a stain for natural fibers) will come close and not kill the rope.
Running rigging was not white, hemp and Manila are not white to begin with and a small degree of tar was applied during twistup..  Standing rigging - pre-petrol (1859) was not black.  It was Pine tar that was used. The shade can be controlled by altering the concentration of the dye.
 
Because extraordinary effort is required now to even obtain linen yarn for a rope walk.  And the quality control for that could be better (Baltic - Etsy). 
Because of practical availability problems, a kit supplied rope may not be a natural fiber.  Synthetics may present an interesting challenge to color.  I have no suggestions for this.  Apart from PVA, anything synthetic or man-made is far outside my personal rules.  

Tea and coffee extracts contain organic acids which have a degrading effect on natural fibers over time.
A Walnut wood dye ( not a stain for natural fibers) will come close and not kill the rope.
Running rigging was not white, hemp and Manila are not white to begin with and a small degree of tar was applied during twistup..  Standing rigging - pre-petrol (1859) was not black.  It was Pine tar that was used. The shade can be controlled by altering the concentration of the dye.
 
Because extraordinary effort is required now to even obtain linen yarn for a rope walk.  And the quality control for that could be better (Baltic - Etsy). 
Because of practical availability problems, a kit supplied rope may not be a natural fiber.  Synthetics may present an interesting challenge to color.  I have no suggestions for this.  Apart from PVA, anything synthetic or man-made is far outside my personal rules.  

Looking at the generic magnifier on the Amazon link,  and bringing to mind the anti-pirate ethic here, I see that it would be more ethical and provide a much better product to take the financial hit and buy the Optivisor brand name unit.  Glass beats acrylic even if it is more expensive to get a variety of lens strengths.  It takes trial and error to find the balance between a high enough magnification and a neck muscle spasm.  The brand name unit has room the wear glasses with it.

Looking at the generic magnifier on the Amazon link,  and bringing to mind the anti-pirate ethic here, I see that it would be more ethical and provide a much better product to take the financial hit and buy the Optivisor brand name unit.  Glass beats acrylic even if it is more expensive to get a variety of lens strengths.  It takes trial and error to find the balance between a high enough magnification and a neck muscle spasm.  The brand name unit has room the wear glasses with it.

Looking at the generic magnifier on the Amazon link,  and bringing to mind the anti-pirate ethic here, I see that it would be more ethical and provide a much better product to take the financial hit and buy the Optivisor brand name unit.  Glass beats acrylic even if it is more expensive to get a variety of lens strengths.  It takes trial and error to find the balance between a high enough magnification and a neck muscle spasm.  The brand name unit has room the wear glasses with it.

Tea and coffee extracts contain organic acids which have a degrading effect on natural fibers over time.
A Walnut wood dye ( not a stain for natural fibers) will come close and not kill the rope.
Running rigging was not white, hemp and Manila are not white to begin with and a small degree of tar was applied during twistup..  Standing rigging - pre-petrol (1859) was not black.  It was Pine tar that was used. The shade can be controlled by altering the concentration of the dye.
 
Because extraordinary effort is required now to even obtain linen yarn for a rope walk.  And the quality control for that could be better (Baltic - Etsy). 
Because of practical availability problems, a kit supplied rope may not be a natural fiber.  Synthetics may present an interesting challenge to color.  I have no suggestions for this.  Apart from PVA, anything synthetic or man-made is far outside my personal rules.  

Which component is this intended to be used for?
It is too thin for frame timbers  - except for miniature scales.  In which case - not safe even if flattened.
Deck planks - not safe.
By not safe - what I mean is that the wood is showing where it wants to go.  Even if you flatten it, it will "want" to go back to this shape.
Hull planking - already a good start for conforming to frame contours  - it may prove to be  a challenge to rip if it can't be pushed flat as is.
 
If you still wish to flatten, rather than a water soak, try steam.  A steam iron or hand steam generator clearer and a lot of weight.

Indeed, the exchange of opinions is often enlightening. It gives us the opportunity to see things from the perspectives of others. Opinions, however, are not facts and therein lies the rub. One may have an opinion about anything that is open to dispute or, as is said, "is a matter of opinion about which reasonable minds may differ." We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. What is "true" isn't something that's a matter of opinion. One cannot have an opinion about whether it is raining or not at a given time and place. It's either raining or it's not. They can have an opinion about whether it is going to rain tomorrow, but even that opinion can be negated by a weather satellite photo that shows there's no possibility that it can rain tomorrow. Predicting the weather used to be a more a matter of opinion than not, but science has done a good job of narrowing that window of "opinion" in the modern age. 
 
More commonly, opinions are expressions of personal preference. One can be of the opinion that broccoli tastes awful and that is neither "true" nor "false." It's just a subjective expression of personal taste. One can say subjectively, "Broccoli tastes awful to me," but they can't say it's objectively  true that it tastes awful to everyone else.
 
In the same way, one can have an opinion of the best way to do something, but their "right to their own opinion" goes out the window when it is certain that their "best way" is simply never going to work. Here is where inexperienced people often get into trouble weighing in on the internet about their "opinion" on political issues when they lack the information necessary to form an informed opinion or are relying on false information in the first place, and, in most instances, they then fall back on the retort that they "have a right to their own opinion." Opinions are subjective. Truth is objective. 
 
So, no, I don't think that what is "right" can be different things for different people when the "right" is an objective absolute. like whether or not a material is insufficient for use in an engineering application. An engineer can say with certainty and not as a matter of opinion whether a bridge will carry the weight of a railroad train. We may call that an "expert opinion," but it's really just a matter of scientific fact unless the outcome is just too close to call. Reality determines what is right. Science determines what is reality. On matters of opinion, however, there is no absolute "right." There may be any number of "rights" and any number of "wrongs." 
 
So, for example, if one posits the premise that a properly built ship model should last for a hundred years, and then asks what materials should not be used in a properly built ship model, we can see that there are "rights" that are "right" for everybody, like the fact that cheap acidic papers cannot be expected not to show the effects of deterioration for a hundred years or that we can't say for sure whether CA adhesives or acrylic paints will last a hundred years simply because they haven't been around for a hundred years. On the other hand, whether one should not worry themselves about their model lasting a hundred years because they aren't going to live that long is irrelevant to the discussion because the basic premise is that a well built ship model should last for a hundred years.

An old method is to use a cutoff sharp end of a nail.  Drill a hole in the bottom end of the mast. Insert the cut end of the nail into the hole and have just enough of the point sticking out to seat into the "deadwood".  If you had cut the slot for the mast too deep, a longer piece of nail can be used to raise the mast a bit.
The size of the nail depends on how large of a hole is drilled into the end of the mast.

I was thinking about your wale bending task.  Bending thru the thick dimension is fighting what the wood wants to do.  But would it be easier to bend a 1/4" x 1/16"?
I was shocked by kits doing wales by superimposing a half thickness wale over the complete first layer planking with a double layer hull POB. If the wale is two layers, the evidence would be hidden by the planking strakes above and below. It is heretical, but you could pretend that the hull is being girdled. 

I did some more armchair experimenting:
Would it help to use cardboard that is close to plank thickness?
Would it help to use a penetrating treatment with a varnish on both sides to stiffen it?
Would a plastic sheet that is thick enough to be stiff, but thin enough to cut with a sharp violin type knife and straight edge work better?
Once the pattern is refined to make a good fit, it can be transferred to two layers of planking stock bonded with something like double sided tape.  This way P&S planking can be spilled together.  About half the work and a better likelihood of bilateral symmetry?
 

If the terminology follows tradition, you have a species of Maple there.  It is close enough to Hard Maple for the differences to be academic.  It is also a local commercial hardwood for you.
Harvesting, seasoning, and milling your own wood is tricky to do and a lot of work if it is not a part of your usual work.  The rewards generally match the necessary investment in time, equipment, and skills if the species harvested are those which are not to be had by any other means.  This would most often be a fruitwood, box, if lucky, hawthorn, Cornus and the like.
 
That editorial caveat out of the way, It needs air circulation to dry before a fungus gets it.  It needs protection from rain and snow. It needs protection from borrowing insects.  The rate of water loss from various surfaces needs attention.  The wet finger rule is seasoning requires 1 year per inch of thickness.
 
The water will leave much more quickly from areas of open end grain: cut ends and where branches are cut off.  Left uncontrolled, the difference in rate of water loss will produce internal stresses. 
The wood will split and check.  In the worst cases, the result is toothpicks.  The open ends must be sealed. This needs to be done concurrent with harvest or soon after.   There are many materials that do this, but quick and dirty is a THICK coating of leftover latex house paint.  Recoat as any splitting there shows there is not enough of a barrier.
 
Bark slows the rate of water loss from the side grain and there also may be eggs or larvae of wood eating insects in it back from when it was standing.  Leaving the bark on invites insect damage, a slower rate of drying, and not discovering any existing rot, which would result in a wasted effort.
Air circulation around each piece is important.  Pieces of wood are generally used for this.  Over here, these are called stickers.  The process of stacking the drying wood using the stickers is termed "stickering".
 
It speeds drying time, making handling easier, and may save on loss to splitting if the logs are immediately reduced to billets.  One inch thick is OK if you do not need stock for larger scale POF frame stock.  Two inch is better if you do need this.  Getting logs into billets is most efficiently done using a band saw.  It is a royal PITA otherwise and generally involves serious loss to kerf.
 
Length,  from the lumber yard, the boards generally come in 8 foot lengths.  My first outing involved the yard bisecting to 4 foot.  This is still impractical. For a while, I cut them into 16" lengths for my bench.  It is a bit fiddly and short, and now I find 2 foot lengths to be my sweet spot.
 
Does your garage have rafters/ trusses?   Is there room there for drying wood?  Is there an attic in your home?  Otherwise, your outside stack will need a blue tarp and probably a new one every 6-12 months.

Sealer seems to be an ambiguous term. 
Sand n' Sealer is a product type meant for full size furniture made from open pore species like Oak, Walnut, Ash ...  It is thick and has solid particles meant to fill the pores.  It is generally better to use a species of wood that does not need any pore filling.  It is really out of scale thick.
 
If by sealer, a clear top coat is what is meant, there are two general schools of philosophy. 
Polyurethane - which comes water based and organic solvent based.  It is a plastic, and to me, looks it.  Many here are devoted to wipe-on poly.  As Bob Cleek writes, it is diluted regular poly, that is just more expensive and has good advertising.
Old fossils prefer shellac.  - lots of posts about it  and how to use it.  Thin and shine depends on how many coats or if it is buffed with a fine abrasive. 
There is also solvent based - usually termed varnish,  which is a polymerized natural oil, like linseed, Tung  with maybe some shellac added in.  Generally thin, but getting an even coat wants practice using it.
 
A primer is usually half concentration shellac or oil that penetrates, and sets up a base for additional coats or paint.
 
The can of stain should give directions for any pre-treatment - follow-on top coats are a matter of personal taste and the final look that is desired. 
High gloss anything is to be avoided.  Matte or flat or egg shell is a better scale appropriate finish look

Allan,
I say this about the spacing of moulds on a POB build.  It may be only a slight difference in final shape, but altering the placement of the moulds along the central spine to a different position from those defined by the plans is not a good thing to do. Especially if the reason is to have the moulds be at regular and equal distant intervals. This does change the hull curves.   This ship seems to be singularly unique in that it has four sets of Station intervals.  There are 4 sets of frame thicknesses and space thicknesses.  It is fiercely complicated when compared to similar monographs.   I am saying that by moving the station intervals so that they are equally spaced, just for looks does not do anything important. The moulds should be hidden by the planking and not seen anyway.  I do not see the point for having symmetry there.  But this is my particular OCD.  It seems that even the designer of the plans says that moving the stations and rotating them CCW 1.2 degrees machts nicht anyway.  (For me this injects certain questions about the author.) 
 
The 17th century hulls (most of them. anyway) were developed using three stations.  The main one at the deadflat, one forward  and one aft.  The various profile curves that define where are the arc centers produce the two smaller moulds at an arbitrary position fore and aft chosen by the architect.  But the hull shape can be changed by sliding these outer moulds along the keel.  Move the forward one closer to the bow and the entry is more buff.  Move the after one closer to the stern and the run there is fatter.  (If I understand it correctly, Dutch shipbuilders did this with three bends on the ways, instead of on paper.  The English and French had more politicians involved and less trust in the shipbuilders, so they started with paper/parchment.)  The waterlines, buttock lines, diagonal "proof" lines were to check for unwanted hollows or bulges.  These guys did not have test tanks, laminar flow tests, eddy checks.  They used experience and preconceived  prejudice as their "scientific" tests for proper hull form.  Moving the stations is redesigning the hull shape.
 
All these problems are minor factors.  This ship is special.  It is elegant.  It is about a magnitude above any competitors in beauty. Even if CRI-CRI is using the awful POB method, he seems to be capturing the hull curves so far. 

Allan,
If I am reading it correctly, what you are doing is lofting new mould shapes at the positions that you have selected.  It is more work, but it would still exactly replicate the hull.
The English seemed to go to laborious means to get their frame sides to define the sides of their gun ports.  The French and North Americans seem to have just used more material and less space in their upper works and cut the ports into the framing timbers.  I make it a goal to only need to use the existing stations from the Body plan to use as patterns for my frames.  I do not do well at drawing curves and doing something like 200 of them instead of just isolating 20 or so station shapes is weeks if not months quicker.  It is also less prone to me induced artifacts.  This means that on average, I am shaping 2-3-4 bends (4-6-8 frames) and their intervening spaces as a unit.  I fill the spaces with low cost Pine held using double sided tape to make it solid and protect the frame edges.
 
I make everything above the main wale a solid wall - no spaces - I find the actual framing there ugly anyway, so I hide it. 
 
In your place, I would use my method instead of POB.  I would use Yellow Poplar.  (Framing lumber Pine will do - specially if you can get No.1 material. HomeDepot "quality" stuff is No.2) The layer thickness where there would be frames can be any convenient dimension. The sum of the layers needs to be equal to the station interval.  It is way more work, but the thicknesses can be set to frame the gun ports without any later cutting in.  The wood species there can be something more pretty than Yellow Poplar.  I used Rock Elm for Renommee gun port sides - a red close to natural mineral pigment red.  By using pin alignments outside the actual frames, the layers are exact and there is an identical pattern in the identical location on both sides of a stack-  The bevels on both sides have their patterns.  No baseboard needed.  Getting the stacks joined properly requires care.  The result is a solid base for single layer planking.  If you fill the gaps between moulds in POB - My way is probably quicker and if you have the machinery -  a serious scroll saw (I use 1/8" blade on a 9" bendtop bandsaw) and a drum sanding table  and a drill press - the alignment pins need a blue million holes.  It makes for a better looking under the planking hull that is hollow if you want to include any guts.
 

I will guess that your kit is not from a boutique supplier based here, so the quality of the the wood species is questionable at best.
This makes using a dye relatively pointless, since the basic material does not warrant quality treatment. So, using an actual stain (semi-transparent paint) would be an improvement.
Checking on WoodCraft's site, you can get 1/2 pint cans for ~$12.00.  A local hardware store may do as well.  If the stain company has a shade that the store does not stock, one that rings your bell, they can probably special order it.  I would go with solvent based over water based.  The water will raise the grain.  You can get around this by pretreating with 10% PVA in water and refinishing after it dries.  Test on scrap.  But good ventilation and latex gloves and oil based will save the step.  Ignore the supposed waste, it may last longer that you think if you seal it well. Paying 10x's more per volume for a smaller bottle may not really be wise economy.

It sounds like the blade is wandering.  This is more of a problem with a bandsaw - and it occurs with me even with a high power quality machine- IF the blade is becoming dull - continuing on usually produces a BANG fairly quickly - - snapped blade - so there is no advantage in pushing.
SO, in light of this,
Iis your blade too thin?
Are there too many teeth on the blade for the thickness of the stock?
Is the blade becoming dull?
The Byrnes saw motor is powerful enough to drive a too thin, too many teeth, dull blade thru too thick stock without slowing down, so the blade will do the protesting.

I will guess that your kit is not from a boutique supplier based here, so the quality of the the wood species is questionable at best.
This makes using a dye relatively pointless, since the basic material does not warrant quality treatment. So, using an actual stain (semi-transparent paint) would be an improvement.
Checking on WoodCraft's site, you can get 1/2 pint cans for ~$12.00.  A local hardware store may do as well.  If the stain company has a shade that the store does not stock, one that rings your bell, they can probably special order it.  I would go with solvent based over water based.  The water will raise the grain.  You can get around this by pretreating with 10% PVA in water and refinishing after it dries.  Test on scrap.  But good ventilation and latex gloves and oil based will save the step.  Ignore the supposed waste, it may last longer that you think if you seal it well. Paying 10x's more per volume for a smaller bottle may not really be wise economy.