Books on modeling are a money pit that pays you back in instruction on how to make wooden model and rig them. Which books your buy depends on the types, historical period, and nationality of models you want to build. Once you have a favorite era and ship type, then you focus on books that touch on your preferences, with a few that cover basics in wooden model construction. Otherwise, you end up trying to buy all of them and end up with a library rivaling Kroum Batchvarov's collection.
So! Start by telling us which period of history interest you most. You may not know yet, but after building the Lady Nelson, you'll have a feeling for where you want to go from there. THEN, ask about book references specific to those vessels. Many books are general, and touch on ship features from over 400 years of vessel types, and although these are great as a reference, they don't zero in on and have much detail on features of a specific place and time. One such book is Historic Ship Models by Wolfram zu Mondfeld. It has LOTS of pictures, and show many parts of vessels across several hundred years.
On rigging, two books stand out for 19th century ship rigging:
Rigging Period Ship Models - A Step-By-Step Guide to the Intricacies of Square-Rig by Lennarth Petersson
Rigging Period Fore-and-Aft Craft - Lennarth Pederson
For Rigging the older 17th century ships like men-of-war:
Rigging of the ships in the days of spritsail topmast, 1600-1720 by Roger C. Anderson
There is a series of books in the Anatomy of the Series, focusing on specific vessels, so if you build one of those ships, they are a must:
Anatomy of the Ship - 24-Gun Frigate HMS Pandora
Anatomy Of The Ship - Hms Victory
Anatomy of the Ship - The 74-Gun Ship Bellona
Anatomy Of The Ship - The Royal Yacht Caroline 1749
Anatomy of the Ship - The Ships of Christopher Columbus
Anatomy of the_Ship - HMS_Bounty
For English ships specifically:
Arming and Fitting of English Ship of War 1600-1815
The Construction and Fitting of the English Man of War, 1650-1850
Much of the instructional information on how to plank and make models is in articles, not books. Myself and the other members can provide those to you from oujr personnal collections.
Many books are found in languages other than English, so if you are capable of translating Italian, German, Dutch or French, you will find some of the best books in those languages. Also, reading foreign language ship modelling forums yields huge amounts of information fast.
