Thank you very much for your observations and compliments! To Mr. Wuirger, I am grateful for you asking what did I use for cover. I apologize in advance for not mentioning this in my previous post. In this case, I used thin glossy paper.over lite ply. On the real aircraft, from this section forward to the nose, everything on the top decking was covered with metal paneling and not fabric. Therefore, it made sense to try to replicate this effect in modeling form. I could have use thin plastic and in fact, any sort of medium would suffice. I chose paper because of its simplicity and ease of use. Besides, it was laying around my home, I might as well put it to good use.
I was fortunate that the glossy paper was treated in a manner such that a light coat of paint would not cause the paper to winkle. The gloss itself is a chemically treated film that produces a smooth finish to the paper and also hides the paper grain too. Too much paint, yes it would eventually cause the paper to winkle. But I was careful not to overdo the paint.
I used two separate pieces of paper carefully cut to fit the each side of the fuselage. The edges would end up meeting just in the middle of the machine gun trough. I figured that the barrel of the gun would hide the edges. If you look on my previous post # 103 and at the last picture, look very carefully at the middle of the gun trough, and you will notice the edges are still separate, but close enough to hide under the barrel of the gun. The reason why the edges of the papers did not meet smoothly is because of the curvature of the trough itself. It's a double compound curve and paper isn't one of those mediums that will not conform to such curves without folding over itself.
First, I had to carefully place the lite ply on the fuselage and tape it down. This was to keep the lite ply in conformity to the curvature of the fuselage. Reason? I knew that if I were to lay the ply flat on the table and laminate the ply with paper, then try to bend the panel to the roundness of the fuselage, the laminated sides would resist and spring back to flat state. This, I found out the hard way! Lessons learned.
Sometimes I get so involved in building the model that I forget to take a few moments and document the build. I think I speak for many of us when we tend to think deeply and try out new ideas in replicating the details of the full sized article and we just simply forget to stop and take pictures or make notes.
After I learned my lesson, I then used a small hammer and dull needle and lightly tapped out big rivets on the main panel sides. Then the main panels were laminated to the taped down ply sides. The small straps were made from thin strips of plastic. For these small rivets, I used a novel decal from MicroMark. These decals actually stick out just like real rivets! They have dimensions and you can feel them sticking out. I still have the original sheet. I highly recommend these decals to almost anyone interested in simulating small scale rivets. They come in two sizes, but they're scaled for trains. They come in "O" gauge and "HO" gauge. I think the "O" gauge is 1/72nd scale and the "HO" gauge is 1/48th scale, but I could be wrong. Perhaps someone on this site could help?
Anyway, I'm jumping ahead of myself and enclosing a photo of the decal sheet. I will be mentioning the decals later in my post during the exhaust manifold build. This time, I remembered to take some photos and actually revealed how its done. Very easy.