I recently purchased an antique medieval carrack ship modeled after a ship in the 14th-15th century. The artist used burlap for the sails. It has a solid wood hull. Does anyone have experience with the history of model ship building and the various materials used during different point in history?

What is your ultimate goal? Are you trying to rebuild a similar ship, or trying to figure out when it was made or..

Ship model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_ship)

This gives a bit of history, maybe some of the links at the bottom will give you even more.