Best advice for beginners: Stain your wood parts BEFORE you glue them. Glue resists stain, leaving blotches. When using PVA glue such as yellow carpenter's glue such as Titebond II, learn how to apply only as much glue as you need, and resist the urge to squirt huge amounts all over your parts. Wipe away excess with the edge of a sharp chisel or similar object, depositing the extra on a nearby rag. If there is any glue film left on the wood, you can either leave it or remove it with a cotton swab. Before applying glue, prepare by having clamps or a pin pusher loaded with a pin and at the ready so you can clamp or pin the parts to hold the joint together as soon as possible.
Prepare to make and correct mistakes with minimal drama and regret. It's part of the building process. The #1 reason people don't build these types of models is usually because they are afraid of making mistakes. JUST DO IT. Forget about impressing people and start on the learning curve. Impressively clean and detailed builds will come later, and actually sooner than you think. Your second ship model will always be at least 50% better than your first one.
As for wood, there are LOTS of choices. For construction of parts like the internal framework of a hull, cheap basswood is best, since you don't see those parts. Basswood does not stain well. Model kits that do use basswood for external parts must be painted to look decent (Model Shipways). Since you are in America like me, good locally available hardwoods to use which stain well and look great with natural grain include cherry, maple, and walnut, all found on local home renovation and hobby stores. Walnut is hard, so it's used mostly for deck furnishings like coamings, railings, and wales on the hull. It you want more expensive and finer wood, one of the best is pear wood, but you have to import it from Europe or Russia. For small parts, avoid oak. Red oak is common here in America, but the grain is so large that tiny parts cut from it, such as small cannon carriages, can crumble and break. Kits often use veneer strips of mahogany or sapele wood for the final planking layer on the hull, but it is not the type of wood used traditionally on ship models made over 100 years ago. It is open grained and can split like red oak, but has a nice red-brown finish many people like. The grain is so large that it doesn't look to scale from a realism standpoint. One wood that looks like oak on the scale of a model is beech. It is often used in dowels for masts and yards.
If you have any more questions, ask away...
