Ok, I know this sounds whacky, but I decided to take apart an old 80's model Mongram F4U-1 Corsair so I could experiment on detailing. It had some broken part anyway.
Cut off the cowling to cut out the cowling flaps. Then tried mcguires mild auto refinisher to buff out the canopy, it worked!
But the really interesting part is when I tried to wire brush off the decals, instead of coming off, the decals got burnished into the panel lines and looked great! Now I had about 4 coats of dullcoat on the model so that's why they didn't come off.
And the wire left a smooth metalic weathering on the wings, instead of that show room look.
Then I decided to see if touching the brush to wet paint would help create paint chips or that weathered look on the wing leading edge. It seems to work, but I need more practice.
MC