I am sure many modellers have been in the same situation. You are afraid to build something until your modelling skills get better, and they never get better because you end up never building anything. Well that was my situation when it came to scratch building boats from wood. I have built many wood kits and have done some scartch building years ago. I have looked at some of the beautiful plank on frame models built by the members of my model boat club and thought "I could never build one of those" Well one of the master builderts had a word of advice for me. He said "Go for it, the worst that can happen is you have a piece of kindling for your fire place" We I took his advice and jumped into building a 1/28.3 ( the plans said it was 1.24 scale but when I measured it out it came to 1/28.3 scale) scale 85" tugboat and have been enjoying it and it is comimh along quite well. So far I have only had one piece of kindling for my fire place with regards to building the super structure. I think I will try a 1/32 scale plank on frame model of the USS Lexington next as I have a great set of plans for it with all the frames drawn out.
So for those of you who find building a wooden model ship intimidating GO FOR IT the worst that will happen is that you will have a piece of kindling for your fireplace.