Popular Mechanics often printed articles about a modeling project, including nice plans. Several years ago they offered reprints of a number of old articles, including model ship projects. I bought one of those reprints- forget which ship- but seem to have lost the plans before I got into building it :-) Sure miss that type of article, even though I still subscribe to the magazine.
Scratch building of models was a very popular hobby back in 30s, 40s, and 50s.