First off, I've combed through the FAQs to make sure I wasn't reheating a dead horse and the flaired user list to see if there was a more tailored venue to ask these. I think this is the best spot, but if not, let me know and I'll happily remove this.
I'm thinking about building a 1/36 to 1/75 scale ship from scratch. I was hoping to find ship plans online, but thus far have found little and less that's actually helpful. Do any of you know of any sites or books that give accurate and detailed depictions of framing, decking, and rigging? Is that something that was even published knowledge? I am principally looking for Man-of-War plans, but at this point anything would be helpful, and if I change my mind and decide to make "just" a ship, any such plans would obviously be helpful as well.
EDIT: Corrected the scale I'm looking to build. A 1/36 scale would have the smallest cannons I could functionally fire. Because, this wouldn't be reddit if it weren't a little ridiculous.
I don't do ship models, but I do know there is literally a whole industry of books dedicated to this subject that a Amazon.com search would be able to solve. They would be enough in those books to help you out I think.
Waterline drafts are pretty common in books on history/ship construction. Howard I Chapelle wrote many books with excellent drafts of this type.
You seem to be looking more for blueprints and cutaways.
Those sorts of documents are usually held by museums. If you ask the museum nicely they will often scan them or send you a reproduction.
You'll have to do some research to find which vessel you want to build a model of and what museum, if any holds the plans.
For starters here's a link to the Smithsonian ships plans collection website. Their collection, though mostly not online, is quite large and does include some warships.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/about/departments/work-and-industry/ship-plans
I don't remember the title, but I saw exactly what youre looking for in one of those picture books with thing like ships and various building drawn in sections... I remember seeing a man-of-war in there too. Try your local library.