Looking great, Lance! I hadn't remembered too many details about that old kit I built as a teenager. From your photos, I can see it doesn't have a fixed fillet for the stabilizers, which makes showing the adjustable tail difficult. On the wing root, the gloss black on the top of the wing fillet should cover all the way to the point at the rear, and the non-skid walkway on the wing should cover the entire wing front to back.
As for the aluminum-painted fuselage, Dana Bell has covered that history pretty thoroughly over the years. Early on, the USN standardized on Aluminum enamel for metal surfaces. With the early primers, the enamel developed a problem sticking to metal and wood surfaces, so they switched to gloss Gray enamel, which became known as Aircraft Gray. By the mid-30's, they switched to Aluminum lacquer, which did stick. During the time of gray metal surfaces, several types would have fuselages with mixed metal and fabric surfaces. On those planes, you would see the metal in gloss gray, and fabric in Aluminum dope on the same fuselage.
Grumman's earlier fighter, the F2F-1, began production during the time of Aircraft Gray fuselages, but was in service long enough that they were often repainted in Aluminum lacquer. By the time the F3F's were in production, Aluminum lacquer was the standard, and all of them were finished in that color. For some reason, when the F3F-2 at the US Naval Aviation Museum was restored, the fuselage was painted gray, which was incorrect.
When I built it back in the day, the Monogram instructions said to paint it gray, so that's what I did.
You're making that old kit look really good!
Pete