Jaager

For resawing, a full size bandsaw is the tool to use.  14" will do the job, but I paid extra for a 3HP  220V motor.  My sense of the situation is that they are all of Asian origin.  The bells and whistles on the Rikon and Laguna seem different, but the base looks about the same.  If you do a lot of it, the amount spent on blades will approach or exceed what the machine costs.  With this tool, 1" and 2" (or more) rough lumber can be used.   There is definite sticker shock, but carbide resaw blades are more cost effective.  Steel blades do not last, especially with the denser species of wood that play nicer for scratch building.  A bit shorter life than carbide is bimetal  3T/4T blades, but they close to carbide in duration of use and a lot closer to steel in cost.    It would be good for your pocketbook if your country played nice with the Chinese directly.  Almost anything that you can do with a 9" or 10" benchtop bandsaw, can be done with a 14" floor model.  My 9" is reserved for scroll cutting, there is no 1/8" blade for my 14".  There is a lot that can be done with big bandsaw that a small one can't do.  The foot print for parking is smaller than I imagined. 

For resawing, a full size bandsaw is the tool to use.  14" will do the job, but I paid extra for a 3HP  220V motor.  My sense of the situation is that they are all of Asian origin.  The bells and whistles on the Rikon and Laguna seem different, but the base looks about the same.  If you do a lot of it, the amount spent on blades will approach or exceed what the machine costs.  With this tool, 1" and 2" (or more) rough lumber can be used.   There is definite sticker shock, but carbide resaw blades are more cost effective.  Steel blades do not last, especially with the denser species of wood that play nicer for scratch building.  A bit shorter life than carbide is bimetal  3T/4T blades, but they close to carbide in duration of use and a lot closer to steel in cost.    It would be good for your pocketbook if your country played nice with the Chinese directly.  Almost anything that you can do with a 9" or 10" benchtop bandsaw, can be done with a 14" floor model.  My 9" is reserved for scroll cutting, there is no 1/8" blade for my 14".  There is a lot that can be done with big bandsaw that a small one can't do.  The foot print for parking is smaller than I imagined. 

For resawing, a full size bandsaw is the tool to use.  14" will do the job, but I paid extra for a 3HP  220V motor.  My sense of the situation is that they are all of Asian origin.  The bells and whistles on the Rikon and Laguna seem different, but the base looks about the same.  If you do a lot of it, the amount spent on blades will approach or exceed what the machine costs.  With this tool, 1" and 2" (or more) rough lumber can be used.   There is definite sticker shock, but carbide resaw blades are more cost effective.  Steel blades do not last, especially with the denser species of wood that play nicer for scratch building.  A bit shorter life than carbide is bimetal  3T/4T blades, but they close to carbide in duration of use and a lot closer to steel in cost.    It would be good for your pocketbook if your country played nice with the Chinese directly.  Almost anything that you can do with a 9" or 10" benchtop bandsaw, can be done with a 14" floor model.  My 9" is reserved for scroll cutting, there is no 1/8" blade for my 14".  There is a lot that can be done with big bandsaw that a small one can't do.  The foot print for parking is smaller than I imagined. 

Bob,
My copy just got here from Amazon.  Your review is spot on.  Thank you for bringing attention to this book.  It is one of the better general technique manuals now in my library.

Bob,
My copy just got here from Amazon.  Your review is spot on.  Thank you for bringing attention to this book.  It is one of the better general technique manuals now in my library.

Bob,
My copy just got here from Amazon.  Your review is spot on.  Thank you for bringing attention to this book.  It is one of the better general technique manuals now in my library.

I acquired a copy of William Frederick's (1874) Scale Journey: A Scratchbuilder's Evolutionary Development, by Antonio Mendez C. recently and now note that somebody is presently "remaindering" new copies of this volume on eBay for the paltry sum of $7.50. (And another $3.50 or so for shipping.) In the spirit of full disclosure,  I don't have any connection with the seller.
 
I'd not been familiar with this book prior to recently acquiring it, but had heard of its author, a highly-thought-of Mexican ship model builder of long standing, which I'd noticed only upon taking a closer look at it.  This book's title is a bit odd. "William Frederick? Never heard of the guy. What kind of models does he make?"  As it turns out, "William Frederick" is a three-masted cargo schooner built in 1874, and its "scale journey" is a description of the building of a scale model of her. "Who'd a' thunk it?" It was the word, "scratchbuildler" and the known model-maker author's name that caught my eye. 
 
As it turned out, I discovered what was one of the better collections of great modeling techniques and tricks I've come across in a long time. The book is a compendium of a highly experienced and creative modeler's techniques presented in the framework of a description of his scratch-building a highly-detailed radio-controlled sailing model of the William Frederick. It's not a practicum or "how-to-build-it" book, but rather a "how I built it" book. I'm one of those "We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two." kind of guys, and I've bought more than a few books on modeling, only to lament that there wasn't anything in them I hadn't seen before. For instance, I must have close to twenty or more books on modeling that contain, to me now, boringly repetitive chapters on "the tools you need to have." I'm sure most MSW forumites have had the same experience. William Frederick's Journey is little different in this respect, as might be expected. What sets it apart, however, is the relatively large number of new, to me at least, approaches to common challenges encountered in building ship models that I haven't seen in other books.  Mendez has one of the best collections of ideas I've seen on setting up a building shop and, for example, provides plans for mobile tool carts I found truly inspiring. He's a creative jig-builder and modeling tool-maker who offers many which are useful as he's designed them, or serve as starting points for those with a creative approach to problem-solving. I was particularly impressed with his extensive treatment of "mass production" block-building. He has two or three separate solutions, including a jig for turning out a dozen identical elliptically-shaped blocks at a time on a disk sander.  His treatment of block-making is the only one I've seen that acknowledges and addresses different techniques for mass-producing the variously-shaped blocks found at different periods in history. Reading this book gave me a lot of new perspectives on how to deal with the many challenges scratch-building provides. It isn't just for "scratch-builders," though. "Scratch-building" seems to have taken on some sort of mystical aura in recent times. To me, it's simply the logical progression of the hobby for anyone who stays with it any length of time. Most modelers quickly "outgrow" the usual run of kits, with a few exceptions (e.g. Syren kits,) and necessarily evolve into "scratch-builders." It starts with buying aftermarket blocks and rigging line and before they know it, their making their own and "it's downhill all the way" after that.  This book will make you a better kit builder as well as a better scratch-builder, which, in my book, at least, are inevitably one and the same thing.
 
Other books are fancier and have more full-page color pictures and drawings and diagrams which may be more sophisticated. Others still may have more extensive treatments of rigging schedules, spar dimensions, and so on (and which duplicate information so many authors of these books seem to employ as "padding.") I'm sure most modelers have come to realize there's no single modeling book that covers it all. This one is no different. The simple fact is, though, that this one has a lot that no others have, much more, in fact, that others don't have than I've ever seen in a single book before. In that respect, it's a gem. It's definitely worth buying for $7.50. I'm sure it was priced much higher when it was published in 2005. 266 pages, hardcover, tons of illustrations, and an index. It just might change for the better how you think about modeling. Priced at less than a snort at the corner pub, you can't go wrong grabbing a copy.
 
 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/William-Fredericks-Scale-Journey-Scratchbuilders-Development-Model-Ships/202632143331?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item2f2dd121e3:g:w~0AAMXQqBxRGwHl&enc=AQAEAAACQBPxNw%2BVj6nta7CKEs3N0qX2rUt1kMWu04v79%2BQt6%2Fc5KwGGM2txm5wMkabdZRx99zBYT8W7%2BtRzhRxwYTIE7OCqlqcg9LShIsVtAkben0OX7PIzBw7IWBQJIPgBH%2F9GJztvrQUZsGeX7YaNgrqwJwb%2F0Igwsj6z6dOPXMnvTmUeuuXaS8npjn0omAzUhV%2B0b6krrYbwEU43DuP5g5rlIwurD6RCJf1xZRNCklWUW6%2FUbNd3zWO5rE0Ae9hmyVAXGREqWj1HIRTsEqxhH4aHEZ%2BMyS%2Bf32edQrTd8ORY2flRO1lQDow9tcaJYSFMNspy%2B3%2FBq83imiaLsHrv7b%2FfcU5W5muzOygMHUakhfJzHqmhxXTuR0u0Wnhhzdl%2FhV5et4cJxRrqag9hFct2Y%2BeXXcsPf34%2BHZjrnw9w362Vlaqyaja%2FwPc%2Fk4aEWe6NZzXAbo1CaEf9jzB6Zf347lBZztpOiCoFEFYd9SUpiSv8nbZLPieLNtvAbw9BX0NARs0EHugOFI2N6%2FxR5Q4TVYWdDldvhm5Us911jIZ15GwXV%2FyoWlCqJirr91qPiZaTioDhx5VtlqQtzQIRSLtXwNQQEg7NII%2FHjJbNntl2kSp5cpAQCRvZ85hmFOR9vRjPsVlPEsZfFa9YpkAValb0uJABcCFKB98QTN0WQC%2BSCvg9fM2m2PzNJIbAK1pqdd06U23IYgB3fUhKdUHSt5l6tcnns0QHtiTb6o43wZjtVYI2DQshpGka3jInlkf%2FeJpVxA5Vlw%3D%3D&checksum=202632143331e891b87235dc49a8a55d59d9b9e0867e
 
Also see: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=William+Frederick’s+(1874)+Scale+Journey%3A+A+Scratchbuilder’s+Evolutionary+Development&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
 
 

For brass, I drill a hole that is a snug/tight fit for the pin or a gauge or two smaller - depending.  I used a curved Kelly clamp to hold the pin.  MM has a tool: Pin Insertion Plier # 85282  that is handy,  but it is a lot useful for bamboo dowels/trunnels.  It gently holds, while a hemostat can crush bamboo - not a problem with brass.  Being able to go in straight allows for an easier aim.
Your suspicion that nail driver/pusher is essentially worthless matches my opinion of it.

The NRG link at the top of this page. (More) (NRG store) The guild store sells the CD's for both journals. You can also subscribe for the current issues.
SIS and Model Shipwright no longer publish. There is a CD with issues of an even earlier journal that died - Model Ship Builder. 

Both are excellent books.  There is no Arban manual for this endeavor  - no single "answer-to-it".
It is more like a hermit crab adding bits from here and bits from there and it can be a money sink.
The NRJ back issue CD's and SIS CD's have a wealth of information.  It would be wonderful if the same could be done for Model Shipbuilder.

Both are excellent books.  There is no Arban manual for this endeavor  - no single "answer-to-it".
It is more like a hermit crab adding bits from here and bits from there and it can be a money sink.
The NRJ back issue CD's and SIS CD's have a wealth of information.  It would be wonderful if the same could be done for Model Shipbuilder.

Gerard,
 
Not having the Leavitt plans,  I will interpret what I see in your pix.
It is all bends.
The space is equal to the width of a frame. i.e. 2/3 room  1/3 space.  This is very common for Antebellum American ships but not so much for the end of the Colonial period.  As far as I know, not much is known about about smaller vessels, but for frigates on up, it was almost all room.  The space was about 1 inch.  This was a 10-20 year span - things evolved post Revolution.  Perhaps the folks at TA&M will find something someday.
 
The bends -  #5
The gap at the keel is unique to me. No floors, it is as though it is intended that there be deadwood above the keel along the entire length and half bends butt against it.  Not the strongest method that I have seen.
The outside line is outer face of frame closest to the mid ship station (the dead flat - because there is no bevel on it).
It goes up to the underside of the rail.
The next line is the bevel of that frame and the mid ship face of the next bend.
BUT, that frame ends at the deck level.
The black line is the bevel of aft side frame.  ( I am guessing that the convention of letters for fore bends and numbers for aft bends is being followed.)
It is black to make it easier to follow.
The next 3 lines are the inside shapes of the molded dimension.  The aft frame ends at the deck level.
I think it is intended that there be a single stanchion (top) at every bend.
 
You may trust Leavitt,  but in your place I would scan the frame patterns,  open them in a drawing program ( Painter for me),  adjust for the scanner scaling aberration,  scale to my preferred scale,  select the right side and horizontally flip it and use that for the left side. (instead of trusting that Leavitt was able to draw the let side to be identical to the right.)  But I would also mate the two sides at the center line and define the floor and make whole bends.
 
I am not sure about Continental brig sized vessels, but most warships seem to have planking covering the inside of the tops. (A feeble attempt at amour?)
With POF, I am enamored with curves and framing of the swimming body.  The area above the main wale/LWL not so much.  It looks more like house carpenter framing - mundane and boring. It only needs to be functional and is almost never elegant.  I cover it with planking.  Because I cover it and it makes for a stronger hull, I make my framing above the LWL solid - including the spaces.
 

OK,  some definitions - 
a FRAME -  floor + 2nd futtock + 4th futtock/top/half top (depending)  
also a FRAME  1st futtock + 3rd futtock + top/half top
a BEND   is both of the frames when joined together as a unit  -  the overlap at each butt makes the unit a strong one.
 
French and North Americans  generally framed using all bends.   The English ( or at least their navy ) often used a wider spacing of bends and had free standing frames (filling frames) in the gap between.
(Butt joints are weak and in a model a free standing frame tends to be fragile.  This makes RN framing a bit of a PITA for POF.)
 
The Body plan is the stations in a stack.   The stations define the mid line of the bend at its location.  All stations define the mid line of a bend.  But, not all bends have a defined mid line on the plan.  It varies with the ship and where along the profile the station is.  It might be every 4th or every 3rd or every other.  I have USN corvettes with 8 bends between stations in the mid ship zone.
 
The confusion you seem to have with bevels and station lines may be because you are thinking the stations are useful for standard POF methods.   They are not.  Except as a check on your curve plotting and as a short cut on every other to every 4th bend, they are useless.  Each bend must be lofted.  If you glue up the stock for each bend 1st,  only the fore and aft shape for each bend  (Hahn).   If you assemble the isolated frame timbers into a bend,  the mid line of each bend also needs lofting.   There are maybe 40 bends in a Cruizer,  so it is 80 or 120 lines that need plotting to loft the framing.
 
The plans for Lexington are actually those of an RN Cruizer brig.  A different era and a different country, 
 
When Davis writes about under bevels, I am not sure that he understood why it was significant.  It was a significant factor in the way ships were framed before 1860.  But Davis was schooled in the methods that were used around 1900 and  at that time much more was done in the mold loft than was done in the earlier era.
 
If you want to see a method where the station lines are important - vital even - check out my log for La Renommee.  I have not presented how to do the lofting or do true POF yet - (how to use easy release bonding and temporary fillers for the spaces, but you may be able to intuit how).
 
One other thing, the floors that Davis is presenting are very short.  The ABS specifies that floors should be 60% of the beam.  What Davis is showing is closer to the length of a half floor which would be in the frame with the 1st futtocks.  Rather than butt at the keel,  the 1st futtocks would butt the half floor.   This was more common in French and North American ships,  but the RN often used a short version termed a butt chock over the keel. 
 

OK,  some definitions - 
a FRAME -  floor + 2nd futtock + 4th futtock/top/half top (depending)  
also a FRAME  1st futtock + 3rd futtock + top/half top
a BEND   is both of the frames when joined together as a unit  -  the overlap at each butt makes the unit a strong one.
 
French and North Americans  generally framed using all bends.   The English ( or at least their navy ) often used a wider spacing of bends and had free standing frames (filling frames) in the gap between.
(Butt joints are weak and in a model a free standing frame tends to be fragile.  This makes RN framing a bit of a PITA for POF.)
 
The Body plan is the stations in a stack.   The stations define the mid line of the bend at its location.  All stations define the mid line of a bend.  But, not all bends have a defined mid line on the plan.  It varies with the ship and where along the profile the station is.  It might be every 4th or every 3rd or every other.  I have USN corvettes with 8 bends between stations in the mid ship zone.
 
The confusion you seem to have with bevels and station lines may be because you are thinking the stations are useful for standard POF methods.   They are not.  Except as a check on your curve plotting and as a short cut on every other to every 4th bend, they are useless.  Each bend must be lofted.  If you glue up the stock for each bend 1st,  only the fore and aft shape for each bend  (Hahn).   If you assemble the isolated frame timbers into a bend,  the mid line of each bend also needs lofting.   There are maybe 40 bends in a Cruizer,  so it is 80 or 120 lines that need plotting to loft the framing.
 
The plans for Lexington are actually those of an RN Cruizer brig.  A different era and a different country, 
 
When Davis writes about under bevels, I am not sure that he understood why it was significant.  It was a significant factor in the way ships were framed before 1860.  But Davis was schooled in the methods that were used around 1900 and  at that time much more was done in the mold loft than was done in the earlier era.
 
If you want to see a method where the station lines are important - vital even - check out my log for La Renommee.  I have not presented how to do the lofting or do true POF yet - (how to use easy release bonding and temporary fillers for the spaces, but you may be able to intuit how).
 
One other thing, the floors that Davis is presenting are very short.  The ABS specifies that floors should be 60% of the beam.  What Davis is showing is closer to the length of a half floor which would be in the frame with the 1st futtocks.  Rather than butt at the keel,  the 1st futtocks would butt the half floor.   This was more common in French and North American ships,  but the RN often used a short version termed a butt chock over the keel. 
 

Heinrich,
Lofting Philippe was such a nightmare that I had blocked two of the additional complications. 
The station lines and the frames are not perpendicular to the keel. The keel is the base line. They are canted forward about about 1.3 degrees (I did not record the exact value).  I used the Body plan as being the actual shape and not squished to the perpendicular. 
With my method, I had to rotate the profile to get the decks, wales rails, and sills  to the proper place and getting a location point was tricky. 
If you do POB and use the Body plan to shape your molds, you will have to slot the molds at the proper angle.
 
The last station aft is not what one would expect.  It is the shape of a different line sloping aft.  I had to loft a new one for my method.  
 
As for my La Renommee -  yes it is sort of POF but with the spaces permanently filled.  It may seem a waste to do the work and hide it, but it is not really.  It is faster to do than making temporary space fillers for true POF and probably faster than POB if you fill the area between each mold and have to carve the filler into shape.    But,  St, Philippe should probably be the last ship one builds and not the first or an early one.  It is a magnum opus.  The number of carvings alone is intimidating.  The plans are much more complicated than the usual ship because they are a replication of an idiosyncratic  late 17th C. French style.  They are probably true to the original, but they can drive one used to 19th C. standard presentation crazy.

I have zero experience with current kits, but I suspect many if not most kit builders would use Pear if they could.
 
Your question presupposes that most kit manufacturers use historical accuracy as a decision point for their choice of planking materials.  Except for the "boutique" kits based here, the wood species in kits tend to have names that sound like they are special  e.g. Walnut  but they usually have out of scale grain and have open pores.  It is low cost and volume availability that usually drives the decision.  The original English ship models that we use for inspiration made heavy use of Pear.  The grain of Pear places it within the relative handful of wood species with scale proper grain and very small pores and density and structure to hold a sharp edge and meet the stresses.  The color is about art.  The actual ships were usually made from a white Oak species or hard Pine species (called Fir at the time).  It was usually coated with a water repellent "gunk" that was dark and in the 19th C.  black paint.
 
Not just visual.  Scale effect.  better working characteristics.
If you get Pear sheets, you can "spill" the planks that would otherwise require edge bending - something that wood does not do easily or with the desired stability.  The tubes of cellulose do not "want" to stretch on the outboard side and compress on the inboard side of the thick dimension and will twist if they can.   Over time and humidity changes, they tend to try to straighten out when nobody is watching.

Bill,
You are potentially golden.   In your place, I would see if the local club has a member with a large band saw.  If there is one, see if he is willing to let you use it.  If yes, find out the length of the blades on his machine. 
Go to Band Saw Blades Direct and order one or two Lenox bimetal Diemaster 2    4 tpi 1/2" by 0.025" blades.  All steel have a short life and carbide does not last enough longer than bimetal to justify paying 3 times more for it.   It would be pushing charity too far to use a donor's blade for a serious number of cuts.  As a beginner in scratch building,  it would be practical to forego using expensive fad/cachet species that are imported and use less expensive locally available species, at least until you have enough experience not to have to ask.   I would see if I could make friends with Riephoff Sawmill or similar.  See if you can get 4x4 or 8x4 domestic hardwood of the proper species.  The commercial ones are Hard Maple, Black Cherry, Yellow Poplar,  outside possibility Honey Locust.  Kiln dried,  If there is a local kiln that caters to civilians, you can get fast access to self harvested species.  Otherwise it is billet, seal, stack, sticker in a out of the way sheltered and ventilated location, and wait years.   Local species that are worth the bother = Dogwood, Apple, Pear (both fruit and ornamental)  Plum, Hawthorn. 
The next stage is a thickness sander.  I have homemade and Byrnes.  Byrnes is worth the cost.   Once you have one dimension from the sander, it is time for a table saw for planks, etc.  Again, Byrnes is worth the extra cost.
 

I agree that Navy Board framing style is best restricted to 17th C. English vessels.  I developed the Naval Timber framing style as a way to have a similar framing but not cross that line.  But Philippe's floors would still be too expensive in wood for my comfort.  The as designed framing has reasonable sized timbers.  The all bends with narrow spaces is very similar to the majority of Antebellum USN vessels that I have lofted and I was wanting something a bit more artistically elegant.  The rest of the ship certainly tops the list for art and elegance. 
 
I bounced around so much when deciding how I would plan the framing, I forgot what I settled on.  Checking, it seems that I picked Davis/Hahn.  All bends, increase the sided dimension of frames to include the space and omit every other bend. The result is wider frames and room = space.  That is what Navy Board is where there are spaces, except that it is every other frame instead of every other bend.  Of course about 1/3 -1/2 the area is solid wood because the timbers of the side by side frames scarf and the timbers in a frame do not butt.  It does save on wood.

You have not indicated yet how you plan to fabricate the hull.  Should you intend to do it POF,  this will be about as complicated an exercise as it gets.
The hull is a monster - as you note, over 3 feet long at your scale 1:64, which is 0.75 times the length of the monograph plans.
As drawn, the two sides of a bend do not meet on a common plane.  There is an alternating box mortise.  I intend to forego replicating that particular detail, should I try this ship.
It is probably before its time in being all bends fir the framing.  The extra work done on mating the bends,  I file as an unnecessary detail that did not reduce hogging and was not used in later ships.
I explored using Navy Board framing for this hull.  The curvature of the hull has the head of those floors so far above the base line, that the width of the stock and waste of wood is too much for me.
I could justify doing Navy Board at 1:120,  but there are so many carvings that I would go totally mad doing them at a miniature scale.  You will have a real challenge doing them at 1:64.
 
The real gotcha is that there are four different intervals for the station lines over the length of the hull.  They are not different intervals of a common R&S.  There are four different R&S.
By my measurement - converted to Imperial -  6 are 10' 3" with timbers sided 15.4",  6 are 9' 3"  - timbers 13.9" ,  3 are 9' 11"  - timbers 14.9",  1 is 12' 9" - timbers 12.75".
The mid ship has an extra bend and dropped space so that the floor timber of each bend can be on the side facing the mid line.  This flipping of the pattern looks to be something unique to the French.
The English and North Americans seem to keep the floor on the same side thru out the length of the hull.  I have no data for other European countries.
If you are using POB, you just must pay attention to where the molds are placed.

My experience was with the topsail schooner Eagle and the scuppers were fairly large rectangular openings.  I was not  seeing a round or oval hole in my mind. 

I am thinking that paper may one of the few flexible materials that will be close to scale.  Given how we see scale effect, a bit under scale may look better.  At the extreme end is Silkspan and the tissue used for holding expensive presents.  A jig the size of the scupper hole in a material that PVA will not bond with can be used to shape the PVA soaked paper.  After it dries in shape, it can then be primed and then coated with lead colored paint.  Saves having to mask each scupper.

Once you have the hatch coming piece positioned on the sled - against the stops - hold it down with a large piece of wood with a hollow that just fits the coming - maybe even involve double sided tape - to keep your fingers away from the blade.  You can even form the hollow from two pieces of wood  and the tape so that you can reuse the cover piece for different sized stock.  A few extra minutes spent on safety can save a lot of time spent on healing.  I think that a table saw is about as dangerous as it gets for a motorized cutting tool.

Bill,
You are potentially golden.   In your place, I would see if the local club has a member with a large band saw.  If there is one, see if he is willing to let you use it.  If yes, find out the length of the blades on his machine. 
Go to Band Saw Blades Direct and order one or two Lenox bimetal Diemaster 2    4 tpi 1/2" by 0.025" blades.  All steel have a short life and carbide does not last enough longer than bimetal to justify paying 3 times more for it.   It would be pushing charity too far to use a donor's blade for a serious number of cuts.  As a beginner in scratch building,  it would be practical to forego using expensive fad/cachet species that are imported and use less expensive locally available species, at least until you have enough experience not to have to ask.   I would see if I could make friends with Riephoff Sawmill or similar.  See if you can get 4x4 or 8x4 domestic hardwood of the proper species.  The commercial ones are Hard Maple, Black Cherry, Yellow Poplar,  outside possibility Honey Locust.  Kiln dried,  If there is a local kiln that caters to civilians, you can get fast access to self harvested species.  Otherwise it is billet, seal, stack, sticker in a out of the way sheltered and ventilated location, and wait years.   Local species that are worth the bother = Dogwood, Apple, Pear (both fruit and ornamental)  Plum, Hawthorn. 
The next stage is a thickness sander.  I have homemade and Byrnes.  Byrnes is worth the cost.   Once you have one dimension from the sander, it is time for a table saw for planks, etc.  Again, Byrnes is worth the extra cost.
 

Once you have the hatch coming piece positioned on the sled - against the stops - hold it down with a large piece of wood with a hollow that just fits the coming - maybe even involve double sided tape - to keep your fingers away from the blade.  You can even form the hollow from two pieces of wood  and the tape so that you can reuse the cover piece for different sized stock.  A few extra minutes spent on safety can save a lot of time spent on healing.  I think that a table saw is about as dangerous as it gets for a motorized cutting tool.

Once you have the hatch coming piece positioned on the sled - against the stops - hold it down with a large piece of wood with a hollow that just fits the coming - maybe even involve double sided tape - to keep your fingers away from the blade.  You can even form the hollow from two pieces of wood  and the tape so that you can reuse the cover piece for different sized stock.  A few extra minutes spent on safety can save a lot of time spent on healing.  I think that a table saw is about as dangerous as it gets for a motorized cutting tool.