Thanks guys for all the comments, and equally as well, the suggestions. The wash over the panel grooves is exactly what I plan to do. Some edges though, have worn through the two coats of Testors gloss cote, disintegrating the printer ink, resulting in the exposed white decal.
As Marc stated, he plans to use clear decal sheets, which is definitely the way to go. My problem was in the graphic process, as I didn't push the contrast enough to end up with portions of clear areas. I was losing too much of the finer grain detail when trying this, so left the main colour still visible, but did print the decals out a bit lighter to make up for this. I figured it wouldn't be any different than painting two coats of the same colour on top of one another.
How wrong I was ... as illustrated by the inset photo, the clear decal is quite translucent, but even the portion in front of the the blade handle looks quite dark, and once on the model, it appears to have doubled in intensity.
-----------------------------------------------
On the subject of homemade decals, I made some screens for the rad mesh located on the main wing. Hadn't planned this, but on the bottom side I had to clean up a build up of paint on the fine screen detail that was already there. The lacquer thinner ate away at the plastic, destroying this detail.
Aftering finding a mesh graphic on the net, http://graphicleftovers.com/graphic/metal-wire-mesh-pattern/ I stitched several copies of it together and then cropped to proper size and scale. It is on clear decal film, so the rad surface itself was painted aluminum beforehand.
regards,
Jack