Hi there Steve
First may I ask you a question - are you going to rub down the hull so that you remove all traces of the original plating? If you are - you may be giving yourself some hard work. However, it does depend upon how good or bad the original plating is. The copier paper I used was straight from the printer attached to the computer - and that was used to represent the thinner of the plates, the outer of the plates I used a card which is used for craft making - this card was used to represent the outer plates or the plates which stick out further in the hull. If you are doing this method, one thing which does work well - if you spray the card and paper first with Halfords grey primer - this prevents you from getting black marks and stickiness on the paper and it also makes it a lot easier to handle.
To glue the card to the hull, I used UHU contact adhesive. EVOSTIK or BOSTIK would both do the same job.
The hull, by the way, which I made did have an outerfinish of fibre glass/polyester resin and the plates still havent come off since I built it.
When I had finished plating the hull, I gave it several coatings of grey paint along with several coats of satin varnish to seal it well.
Did I make 160 portholes - aye I did that
- phew.....the way I did that was to cut brass tubing into lengths of 1/4" using a mini pipe cutter (you can purchase them pipe cutters from modelling shop) line all the cut out tubes onto a piece of plywood held with double sided tape and then I mixed clear epoxy resin up - filled them all up with that. I find this method makes the best portholes.
aye
john