Tim,
The rivets I use are from Pro Mark. They are dry transfer graphics and are simply burnished onto the surface. Pro Mark's marketing says that there is no need to put clear over the top of any of thier graphics, but I always do just to be sure that they stay put.
After painting all of the colors onto the airplane I wet sand the entire thing, then do all of the panel lines with a .060 Rapidograph pen (I use this because you can mix your own ink color in it), then I apply the graphics, and put all of the rivets on last. This airplane was a bit more of a PITA for the clear since most of it has a flat finish but all of the flourescent red is shiny, so I had to tape off all of the red to shoot the flat clear on it. Inevitably when I un-masked it many of the rivets came off with the tape, so I had to go back and re-apply them before taping off the flat surfaces and then shooting the gloss clear.
