Greg and Mike, thanks kindly for the input, much appreciated.
A base coat of aluminum to the required areas prior to decals is exactly how I planned to approach this. If I could paint this freehand I think I would, certainly would require some kind of magnification as it is a very delicate pattern at 1/48 scale. As it is, I used the comp screen to greatly increase the artwork view (600dpi). I agree though, this would not work on the curves of a full cowl.
So here's a quick four step description at how I arrived at the decal printing stage.
1. Master patterns are made of the aluminum areas using Tamiya yellow tape, followed by a scan and importing to the paint program.
2. Instead of creating from scratch a large enough background of the machined aluminum, I made several copies of the one section I had posted earlier. Stitching them together resulted in this one large file.
3. A mask is created (orange) of the scanned shapes.
4. The white portion is copied and pasted over the pattern. A final crop (not shown) and is ready to print.
At the moment, the printed decals (on clear film), are drying after brushing on some Testors gloss cote. Do hope to post some positive results later, but in the mean time, here is how the wood grain cleaned up. I did over spray the whole fuselage with dark brown as the wood was actually painted over. Also added the pilot's personal insignia in the form of an owl.
regards,
Jack