Many years ago Sterling had a wooden kit of the Uss Missouri in a fairly large scale. Unfortunately Estes bought the assets of Sterling and the Missouri is not currently available. I hate to think what one might run on Ebay. About the only choice today would be a plastic model and about the biggest is 1/350th. Tamiya has a good kit, but if you want wood you will pretty much be out of luck.
While I have seen some hand painted models it is a skill I have never been able to develop. Most admittedly bang up jobs are done with airbrush. For that I would recommend a Paasche model "H". It is good, durable airbrush that is packaged with three dissimilar tips. It is economy than an Iwata, though some Hobby Lobby market carry both and you can normally score one while Hobby Lobby's 40% of sales.
Acrylic paints are something that I have not gotten into and do not know much about. The advantage is that you do not have to use special thinners. Some modelers use Windex to thin. My experience is generally with enamels. I have a friend that uses finger nail polish thinned with lacquer thinner on his cars, as he likes the range of colors and fine grain of the metallic/metal flake ones.
You do not have to have a compressor, some people prefer to use a Co2 bottle, but that seems somewhat expensive. Some of the discount tool fellowships (like Harbor Freight) stock reasonable compressors. Probably the most import thing to a good conclude is good surface preparation. In other words a good clean. Plane surface. As I have gotten older I have advanced a tendency to prime the surface and after that dries well to sand it with very fine grit paper. Try 3200, 2500, in that range.
Afterwards I wash it and allow it to dry thoroughly. Thinning the paint is an art, not a science. That is something you just have to experiment with.
The best (smoothest) conclude should be obtained by applying a good color coat first. After that has dried well you can polish out any irregularities with fine grit sand paper (2000, 3200, something of that order.). If further coats are needed you can apply them lightly afterwards. I would wait for clear coat until the conclude is flaw free. If you are using gloss paint for the color coats make sure that the coats are fully dry in the middle of coats. Sometimes that might take a day or two. A trick that a friend uses for his funny car models is to use finger nail polish as it dries very smooth.
I have managed to get fairly Plane finishes by polishing the surface prior to my first coat and construction up the paint in light layers. I also sometimes use flat paints and a final gloss coat that normally results in a Plane finish. There admittedly is not a science to good paint finish; it is more of an art that each someone develops on their own.
I am not sure what scale architectural models are build to, but 1:200 does not equate to inches very well. 1/48th works out to 1/4-inch equals 1 foot, and 1/72 equal 1/6 to one foot. The scale should be divisible by 12 (i.e. 1/144th scale would be 144 divided by 12 which gives 1/12 of an inch equals one foot). You could all the time go with 1/192 (1/16 of an inch equals one foot), which is a beloved scale for ship models. Other choice would be use metric where 1/200th would work fine.
As far as materials you have a good choice. There is all the time the old standby: balsa wood. Balsa is light and easy to cut. A better choice might be plastics, in which case I would recommend using plastic from Evergreen Scale Models. That enterprise produces a wide range of shapes (sheet plastic, I beams, corrugated, etc.). Plastic also produces plastic in many construction type shapes.
Three possibilities come to mind. One is the old standby balsa wood. Balsa is fairly cheap and easy to work with. Some glues can be used with balsa: Elmer's, wood glue, super glue and even an adhesive that is used it wooden model construction. Balsa can be cut with an Exacta knife, or razor blade using a right edge for right lines. Sheet plastic is the second material.
Super glues, or solvent type glues work fairly well and plastic is very easy to cut in right lines, you need only score it with the blade and then snap it along the line. The third possibility is solid foam like that used in insulation. The first two are ready at any hobby shop and the foam is ready at a hardware store. There are all the time the old standbys paper and cardboard, but they do not offer any more ease in construction and will not have the force of the other three I mentioned.
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