Jaager

Before you jump to a mass market sort of mill, you may wish to visit littlemachineshop.com and at least look at the $800 Sieg.  A wider view of the field can be useful.
Also, expenditure on accessories may be greater than that of the original machine.

Before you jump to a mass market sort of mill, you may wish to visit littlemachineshop.com and at least look at the $800 Sieg.  A wider view of the field can be useful.
Also, expenditure on accessories may be greater than that of the original machine.

Before you jump to a mass market sort of mill, you may wish to visit littlemachineshop.com and at least look at the $800 Sieg.  A wider view of the field can be useful.
Also, expenditure on accessories may be greater than that of the original machine.

I lived for many years without a lathe or mill before I acquired a good used 12X42" Atlas lathe with extensive tooling for an amazing price. It has a milling attachment and I've never needed a bigger mill for what I do. I also have a Unimat SL modeler's lathe which converts to a mill. There are a very few things that cannot be done without them, but they aren't things that need doing all that often. You can do milling on a lathe with the right tooling. You can't do turning on a mill as you can on a lathe. In the world of wooden ship modeling, you don't need a lathe or a mill, but if you want to seriously scratch-build in wood, you do want to have accurate miniature wood-working power tools and that means "the trifecta:" the Byrnes table saw, thickness sander and disk sander, plus a decent drill press and a shop vacuum. Next, you'll want a decent scroll saw, not a cheapo model. If you want to mill your own wood from the tree, you'll need a 14" band saw. Only then should you start lusting after a lathe or a mill. Focusing on acquiring the table saw and thickness sander first is essential these days. Pre-milled stock is getting harder and harder to find and I, for one, am convinced it will soon be unobtainable at a price any sane person would want to spend. The wood you can get for nothing out of an old apple or holly tree and the like will quickly pay for that saw and thickness sander right out of the gate.
 
One thing that can't be said too often or too loudly to the uninitiated: don't underestimate the cost of the tooling essential to use machine tools like lathes and mills. In order to get the use most expect from their lathes and mills, you will have to spend at least as much on tooling as you did on the lathe or mill itself. Even the fancy package deals that advertise all the "comes with" tooling provide only the most basic of tooling and often not the best quality at that. For this reason, the Chinese Sieg 7X lathes, preferably from a vendor that will guarantee quality control (e.g. Little Machine Shop, Grizzly, etc.) are probably your best bet in terms of bang for your buck because, since there are so many of them in circulation, their tooling is more available and less expensive. Taig and Sherline are great machines, but they are much lighter than the Siegs and so more limited in their abilities and the cost of their tooling is wicked expensive. (Proxxon has its fans, but I find their tools priced far higher than their quality warrants.) You really don't want to spend the $1,500 to buy even an entry-level lathe or mill and their essential tooling that is going to sit on your shelf 99% of the time while you try to scratch build without a Byrnes table saw, thickness sander and disk sander. 

Before you jump to a mass market sort of mill, you may wish to visit littlemachineshop.com and at least look at the $800 Sieg.  A wider view of the field can be useful.
Also, expenditure on accessories may be greater than that of the original machine.

If you do not contemplate manufacturing your own metal tools, then neither a mill nor a lathe will prove to be an economical expenditure.
The parts of a hull that they will produce are relatively few.  If you are going with a larger scale and mostly leaving the outer planking off, there may be more work for a mill.
The probability is that both tools will mostly sit, looking for a job, if it is only wood that they will be used on.  
For fabricating metal tools, both are vital.
 
A Byrnes table saw, disk sander,  and a drum sanding table and an accurate drill press come far ahead of these two tools.
Serious POF probably means that you will have to be your own sawmill.  In which case - a big boy bandsaw and Byrnes thickness sander slip in ahead of them.

If you do not contemplate manufacturing your own metal tools, then neither a mill nor a lathe will prove to be an economical expenditure.
The parts of a hull that they will produce are relatively few.  If you are going with a larger scale and mostly leaving the outer planking off, there may be more work for a mill.
The probability is that both tools will mostly sit, looking for a job, if it is only wood that they will be used on.  
For fabricating metal tools, both are vital.
 
A Byrnes table saw, disk sander,  and a drum sanding table and an accurate drill press come far ahead of these two tools.
Serious POF probably means that you will have to be your own sawmill.  In which case - a big boy bandsaw and Byrnes thickness sander slip in ahead of them.

If you do not contemplate manufacturing your own metal tools, then neither a mill nor a lathe will prove to be an economical expenditure.
The parts of a hull that they will produce are relatively few.  If you are going with a larger scale and mostly leaving the outer planking off, there may be more work for a mill.
The probability is that both tools will mostly sit, looking for a job, if it is only wood that they will be used on.  
For fabricating metal tools, both are vital.
 
A Byrnes table saw, disk sander,  and a drum sanding table and an accurate drill press come far ahead of these two tools.
Serious POF probably means that you will have to be your own sawmill.  In which case - a big boy bandsaw and Byrnes thickness sander slip in ahead of them.

Bending the planks:
wood is a bundle of cellulose tubes - cellulose is not soluble in water ( I am not sure it is soluble in anything that leaves it useful when precipitated out. )
The glue that holds the fibers in position is lignin -  It is soluble (or affected) by pure hot liquid ammonia - the explosive industrial stuff, not the household cleaner -which only mars any wood exposed to it.
Heat will loosen the lignin bond.  Steam is a more effective way to transfer heat into the interior of a piece of wood.  Dry heat, if too high, can degrade or char the wood.
If you keep in mind what is going on at the cellular level, it is easier to evaluate the methods in use to bend the wood. 
Keep a thought on this factor: - that you fighting Nature.  Given any chance, she will reverse your efforts.  Spilling the planks is working with Nature, even though it is more expensive - in time and materials.
 
I admit that I am in foreign territory with POB and two layer planking.  However, it seems to me that the looks of the first layer is not important. It is probably counter productive or a waste of effort  to go much deeper than medium grit for sanding it. If brass pins are are nipped close and treated to a warding file, there is nothing there to affect any sanding material.  If the outer layer is to be bamboo trunneled, then the pins under it could affect any drilled holes.  But, the basic POB method is not really compatible with this (unrealistic, but fun modeler's convention.).

I've heard of ships carrying grindstones as ballast to places where they might be sold, but I've never heard of jettisoned grindstones being recovered over the course of my forty-plus years of familiarity with maritime archaeology in the S.F. Bay Area. During the last of the Nineteenth and beginning of the Twentieth Centuries, the large "ocean carriers," mainly four-masted barks and ships such as Balclutha, primarily carried grain grown in the Central Valley of California to Europe and, finding cargoes wanting on the return leg from Europe to California, required balasting. They would carry cobblestones quarried in Europe, called "Belgian block," that were off-loaded at San Francisco and used to pave the streets of the City. Many are still in place, though often now covered in asphalt. They are pulled up when streets are rebuilt and were once resold as construction material. I once owned a home with a twelve foot high living room wall built of them. Today, the City realizes their value and has an ordinance requiring all cobblestones removed from the streets to be retained for reuse by the City itself for historic restorations and the like.

If you do not contemplate manufacturing your own metal tools, then neither a mill nor a lathe will prove to be an economical expenditure.
The parts of a hull that they will produce are relatively few.  If you are going with a larger scale and mostly leaving the outer planking off, there may be more work for a mill.
The probability is that both tools will mostly sit, looking for a job, if it is only wood that they will be used on.  
For fabricating metal tools, both are vital.
 
A Byrnes table saw, disk sander,  and a drum sanding table and an accurate drill press come far ahead of these two tools.
Serious POF probably means that you will have to be your own sawmill.  In which case - a big boy bandsaw and Byrnes thickness sander slip in ahead of them.

A quality SS steel single edge razor blade does a far job of fine scraping.  An attempt at producing a burr could be tried if you have a small carbide rod.
 

Davis has a drawing to these.  His name for them is hutchocks.  If the scrap is fairly thick, there is room to insert the tip of a curved Kelly clamp to grip the pin after the scrap is split out. 
rotation usually breaks the glue bond. A buffer under the Kelly to protect planking, it makes for an effective prise.
The chock is a good idea in any case, but since the planks are to be covered by a 2nd layer, the pins could be flush nipped and filed flush.
There are museum models from France that have brass trunnels showing.
There are also recent photos of model restoration where iron (steel) pins where used. After a hundred years or three the nails were oxidized and gone, leaving a black stain on the planking.
So, anywhere there is any danger of a pin being not removable, it is wise to only use brass or copper pins.

There was a time when sails were made using a drafting medium that was a very fine cloth.  The "starch" binder was extracted.  I have never encountered this material.  It could be this.
If you consult a museum conservator, a save way to clean may be suggested.  It sounds like it the material is hardy.  I am imagining that repeated rinsing repeatedly with distilled water would remove water soluble concretions.  The likely contributor to the yellowing is the condensed volatile products of tobacco combustion.  This is really nasty stuff to remove.
 
When done, it needs its own case.

To add to this topic  I am posting - with Guild permission as copy of the data provided to NRJ subscribers in 1979.
It is from USN Standards 1900
 
 
oars.pdf

A quality SS steel single edge razor blade does a far job of fine scraping.  An attempt at producing a burr could be tried if you have a small carbide rod.
 

I drew maps with pen and ink for a utility company in the mid-1980's.  The medium you refer to was starched linen.  The starch would take ink and with care, the ink could be erased.  With a linen substrate, the maps  could be folded many times and left folded without the danger of separating along the folds.  After so many revisions an old map had to be copied on to new material.  Some of the copied maps were 3X4 feet in dimension.   I would bring them to my Mom.  She had a dress-making/tailoring business at home.  She would wash the starch out and use the fine linen for making baby clothes. 
 
If you can find a source of old maps, ones without historical significance, you will have all the fine linen you will need.
 
 

There was a time when sails were made using a drafting medium that was a very fine cloth.  The "starch" binder was extracted.  I have never encountered this material.  It could be this.
If you consult a museum conservator, a save way to clean may be suggested.  It sounds like it the material is hardy.  I am imagining that repeated rinsing repeatedly with distilled water would remove water soluble concretions.  The likely contributor to the yellowing is the condensed volatile products of tobacco combustion.  This is really nasty stuff to remove.
 
When done, it needs its own case.

To add to this topic  I am posting - with Guild permission as copy of the data provided to NRJ subscribers in 1979.
It is from USN Standards 1900
 
 
oars.pdf

Most people find using a much finer sanding grit than 150 for final finishing work, usually at least 320, and do not attempt to finish coat open pored wood species like walnut without first using a filler. That produces a perfectly smooth "furniture grade" finish, if that is what one is shooting for.
 

To add to this topic  I am posting - with Guild permission as copy of the data provided to NRJ subscribers in 1979.
It is from USN Standards 1900
 
 
oars.pdf

To add to this topic  I am posting - with Guild permission as copy of the data provided to NRJ subscribers in 1979.
It is from USN Standards 1900
 
 
oars.pdf

The length of oar per boat type and the number of them are in a table in W E May.
It is from 1886  but should provide realistic data.
I f you do not have a copy, list the various boat types and their lengths and I will extract the specific data.

The length of oar per boat type and the number of them are in a table in W E May.
It is from 1886  but should provide realistic data.
I f you do not have a copy, list the various boat types and their lengths and I will extract the specific data.

If this helps the ship type is called a Galleon.  This was a major type of ship used between about 1550 and 1650.  It was armed with cannons and could be used both as a warship and to transport valuable cargos.  These ships were used by the Spanish to transport the vast wealth from their American Colonies and both sides used galleons in the battles of the Spanish Armada.  Galleons rate high in public imagination so many models of them have been built.
 
I agree that your particular model is what we would call a decorator quality model.  It is not built to any particular scale, and is only an approximation of what current scholarship believes the real thing looks like.
 
Ship modeling can be a lifetime hobby and this might be the perfect opportunity for your son and his grandfather to do something together.  I would suggest that you get your son a book or two about Galleons, the Spanish Armada, etc. so he gains an appreciation of the history behind the model.
 
Roger