Do it, then show me how it turned out. Or buy this one. haha. I stole this idea from the nose artists of the 40s so it's not my idea technically. Go for it and run with it. I always loved unnecessary rivets.
Oh, i hadn't even thought about the brass... it'd be so cool if you could weld a length of spent casings with tips on them (so they dont shoot off in the engine bay for some reason, just draped off the side of the head with the last round welded to it so it looks like it's being fed into the VC... i'm thinking outside the box, and I dont know how to weld, so I'll stick to painting the link.