Thanks to everyone who took the time to look in and comment - much appreciated!
I tried something different to emulate the worked-metal look on the cowling this time. After airbrushing the parts with Alclad II Dark Aluminum, I used plastic screen to make a template to place some silver dots on the surface, with the idea of keeping the dots small and (somewhat) in alignment. Using copper clips to hold the screen in place, I took silver printers ink and touched each spot through the holes using a fine tipped brush.
The cowling sections were done separately to ease the process, and were sealed with Future afterward. The fit was tested to make sure there would be a clean joint when they were all glued in place. Cheers!
After aligning the screen on the dark aluminum, silver printers ink was painted through the holes.
The front cowling was trickier to do with the curved section to manage. Clips were moved over a bit to hit all of the holes.
Although not perfect, the pattern ended up better than my previous attempts.
