I agree completely with Gerarddm. The Built-Up Ship Model is jam-packed with valuable, clearly-written (and illustrated) information about how real wooden ships were built (in the nineteenth century), and good, sound, 1920s-vintage techniques for modeling them. By all means read it; just be aware of its limitations.
I'm actually not sure whether Davis himself was responsible for the "Lexington" reconstruction. At about the same time his book was published (maybe a little earlier) a set of plans, by Clyde Leavitt, appeared in Mechanix Illustrated magazine. (A friend of mine gave me a set that he ordered from the magazine about fifty years later.) The two reconstructions seem to be identical. I believe Mr. Leavit may have drawn the fold-out plans that were sold with the book - but I'm not sure.
For the record, the model by August Crabtree in the Mariners' Museum is not labeled "Lexington" any more. Getting its label changed was one of the few enduring changes I made in the three years I was curator in charge of ship models there. After lengthy discussions with the rest of the curatorial staff (not with Crabtree; by the time I got there he wasn't on speaking terms with the institution) it was decided that, in view of the reputation the Davis "Lexington" reconstruction had acquired, the museum needed to "come clean" and disassociate itself with it. In the gallery label, and in the text of the book the museum published about the models, the model is referred to as an "Armed Brig, ca. 1810." (Actually that's something of a misnomer, too - and my fault. In terms of rig the model isn't a brig; it's a snow.)
A great deal of fuss has been made about the Crabtree models over the years. After spending a good deal of time looking at them "up close," I have to say that some - though by no means all - of the hoopla stems from the brilliant design of the gallery - especially the lighting. One of my duties was to give the models a cleaning and some minor restoration. One of the technicians and I removed each ship from its case, took it back to a work room, worked on it for a day or two, and put it back. We had to take them out and move them around the museum a second time to take the color photos for the book. I remember one occasion when I had one of the models in the work room, sitting on a block of foam rubber under flourescent light. Several staff members came strolling by on their way to and from lunch, and said "where'd that model come from?" When I told them it was a Crabtree model, they found it hard to believe.
It needs to be remembered that Crabtree built those models over several decades and, like anybody else, he improved tremendously as he gained experience. Several of those models (the Venetian galleass and the English 50-gun ship, for instance) are among the finest models I have ever seen anywhere. The workmanship and complexity of them leaves me in utter awe. Others - the ones he built earlier - really do depend on that gallery to help them impress the visitors. The "Exington" (as we started calling it) was one of his first projects. Removed from the context of that room it really looks no better or worse than any of the hundreds of others that various people built on the basis of the Davis book. I have, in fact, seen pictures in magazines sent in by folks who, by most reasonable definitions, did a better job on their "Exingtons" than Crabtree did.
As I understand it, the museum recently undertook a thorough remodeling of the Crabtree Gallery. I haven't seen it since then, but I hear it's even more spectacular than before.
Read the book, enjoy it, and use it as a source of information about (a) how wood ships were built in the nineteenth century, and (b) how ship models were built in the 1920s. But for information about American warships of the eighteenth century - look elsewhere.