Marcus,
The operative word is building, as it is very much a work in progress and has been on and off project for well over two years.
My primary source has been "Constitution, Super Frigate of Many Faces, Second Phase 1802-07" written and illustrated by William and Ethel Bass, which has been discussed on this forum in the past. It is a fairly thorough examination and analysis of the Corne painting, which applies the characteristics of the ship dipicted in the painting to scale drawings of the ship, assuming certain major hull characteristics such as length and gunport locations remained constant over the ship's life. It seems to be a reasonable interpretation of what the ship as depicted in Corne's painting may have actually looked like and, lacking any other contemporary illustrations, is probably the best bet for someone wishing to build a model of the ship during this period.
The conversion of the Revell kit to the earlier configuration is quite involved and my approach was to cut the bulwarks down flush with the upper deck, strip the hull of all surface detail and decoration above the waterline, and cut away the quarter galleries above the bottoms of the windows. The entire head area needs to be scratch built, thickened main wales added below the gun ports, new bulwarks added at the quartedeck and waist, and new quarter galleries and transom fabricated.
I currently don't have the means to post pictures on this forum, but I will try to figure out how to do it and post some in the next few days.