Throughout the history of aviation, aircraft have been built from a variety of materials. It started with sticks and fabric, moved on to aluminum and eventually composites were introduced to the construction of airplanes. Presently aluminum is the dominant material in aviation as it has been for some time, yet it seldom (if ever) gets involved in the world of scale model building.

I agree that aluminum has not been totally absent from modelling as it has made its appearance in the form of adhesive backed aluminum foil as a means of representing the look of a bare metal surface, but in my opinion this method doesn't quite hit the bullseye. In fact, I think it misses the target altogether. Riveted sheet aluminum has a definite dimensional characteristic, a texture, a glass smooth yet dimpled wavy irregular surface that a piece of foil applied to a dead flat surface cannot begin to duplicate. Additionally, foil has the unfortunate characteristic of transferring the texture of the adhesive to the foil as it gets burnished down giving the foil a look of orange peel that is never seen in aluminum of a full size aircraft. Efforts are usually made to minimize this appearance by scuffing the surface with steel wool or some other abrasive, but the end results (creative as they may be) again look like nothing that I've ever seen on a real aircraft.

I think pie pan or soda can grade of aluminum sheet or foil (call it what you will) can be used as individual panels on an airframe in much the same manner that the soft sticky foil is used, but these panels would have the advantage of having actual sheet metal characteristics such as having dimples at rivet locations and a slight waviness that sheet metal riveted over an open frame has. Whether painted or polished, the skin of a model done in this manner would have the unmistakable look of a real aircraft without having to resort to weathering or any other form of visual deception in order to be more convincing.

Without a doubt, this kind of process wouldn't be for everybody, but for those who carefully map out every panel line and rivet on an airframe, this would probably be the ultimate realistic effect.