You can use a pounce wheel, used by seamstress to transfer patterns to material.

My question is, does one really need to add rivets to most aircraft?

If you were to stand at a distance from a 1:1 aircraft equivalent to the viewing distance of a 1:48 model I don't think you could see many rivets. Or am I wrong about that?

Hey, I'm not saying riveters lives don't matter!

Actually, if there is such a thing as an anti-rivet-counter, then it might just be me! I am not one to discourage someone from building a model they way they want to; just asking the question since I think maybe we get so accustomed to kits being produced with rivets all over them that we feel like they need to be there, when in reality they don't. They do add visual interest, though, so if you like it , go for it!

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Hey, I'm not saying riveters lives don't matter!

Actually, if there is such a thing as an anti-rivet-counter, then it might just be me! I am not one to discourage someone from building a model they way they want to; just asking the question since I think maybe we get so accustomed to kits being produced with rivets all over them that we feel like they need to be there, when in reality they don't. They do add visual interest, though, so if you like it , go for it!

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Just chiefing you a bit Mark. I think we all sometimes forget the whole scale distance aspect of our hobby. I'm neither a counter of rivets, nor am I against those that do... I love a good looking model, diorama or vignette. What ifs, fantasy, sci-if, I appreciate them all. But your original point is quite valid, if I couldn't see it from the scale distance, why do I need to put it in? At the end of the day, I think it comes down to the fact that we are looking at the model from a 1:1 distance from our own eyes, and not thinking what it would look like from a 35th or 48th scale distance. Because we can, or cannot focus on the model as the case may be, we tend to want more and more detail...