If you have a decent hobby shop in your neighborhood, take a look at its model railroad department. You'll probably find a rack of metal shapes sold by a company called K&S, containing brass and aluminum tubing, strips, rods, channels, etc. That assortment has several diameters of brass wire in it. In a hobby shop with a good railroad department you'll find a line of scratchbuilder's parts by a company called Detail Associates. That company sells clear plastic envelopes containing brass wire in a wide variety of diameters - including some extremely fine ones.
Three types of wire are commonly available and useful for ship modeling uses. Music wire (aka piano wire) is extremely hard and rigid steel. In all but the finest diameters it's pretty tough to cut; in the larger sizes the best way to do it is with a cuttoff wheel on a Dremel tool. Its biggest virtue, though, is that it's rigid. It's good for such things as propellor shafts, mounting pedestals, and other stuff that isn't supposed to bend.
Brass wire is nice stuff. It's rigid enough to hold its shape under most circumstances, but easy to bend. It also solders well. (Music wire doesn't.) Brass wire can be cut with almost any type of cutting tool. For nice, square-ended cuts, try a fingernail clipper.
When bent into really sharp angles, or twisted tightly, brass wire has a tendency to break. The way to cure that problem is to hold the wire over a candle flame till it turns red. It will then be extremely soft - too soft for some purposes, but ideal for others.
The third common modeling wire is copper - soft, easily obtainable, and easily soldered. An excellent source of extremely fine copper wire is multi-stranded electrical wire. Places like Radio Shack sell remarkably fine multi-strand hookup wire that's easy to separate into individual strands. The finest of that stuff - e.g., the multi-strand wires used for earphones on portable radios - is so thin it's hard to see.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.