Oh My,
This could take all day if you let it. I am going to make it short and sweet. Foil is a Wonderful thing. BUT there places on a bird that are almost impossible to foil. There is a creme based polish that will work. It's used for Picture Frames when restoring or antiquing one.
As you apply this stuff you rub it in place. The more you rub the shinier it gets!
I have used it on a whole aircraft. I thought I was messing up, but after two years on the " Shelf of Doom" I took that B-52 ( REVELL'S old small one) down and rubbed the Be-jaysus out of it. Talk about a shine ! Clearcoated it and gave it to my retired " BUFF" pilot neighbor.
Now for those Apaches, Conairs and Taylorcrafts and Cessna's use the thinnest foil you can. Small pieces, thinly overlaping at the panel lines. Very thinly!
Burnish with a Soft clean " T " shirt type rag. CLEAN, I might add. No fabric softener on it. This leaves a weird unseen finish in spots! Now take the thinnest shiniest sheet you can. Figure where you are going to start. NEVER, have a panel seam come up in the middle of another panel.
Now on Cowlings you can get a nice smooth finish. Just make your pieces smaller and like I said burnish them with some kind of aluminum handle or even, Believe it or not, in a tiny space a piece of aluminum tubing will work too!
It seems to transfer something. Don't ask me, I only have seen the results. Talk about a different shine. And surely a beautiful one that won't go away! I learned this on a project involving a 1/16 scale 57-Chevy! The bumpers had bad spots where the sprue was attached and a seam that's not on the real car! Well, after I burnished the foil in that area, was I surprised. I did it because I Mis-Placed my wood Burnishing tool.
Now, it's S.O.P for all my civvy A/C. Now the last thing. Put the decals on and make sure to trim close to the letters or stripes. Then Clear-Coat the whole aircraft in Clear Gloss and do not handle it for a week. Really ! If you choose not to clear coat, Just be careful around the decals and as it Ages, You can polish it up to look like new again!