Thanks Wink, looks like I will have to settle for the kit parts then 
No worries.
If you're still talking about the scopes, then I found the problem with the kit parts wasn't so much the detail at the top of the scopes, but that the shafts of the scopes just didn't look right. There was no way to get them to look like hydraulic tubes, and they wouldn't move very well in the wells they were supposed to telescope out of.
The brass scopes are well shaped, but again the brass doesn't mimic hydraulic tubes very well.
So what I did was to get aluminum tubes of the right diameter from the shop and used the hot knife (you can tell I get a lot of use out of that knife) to cut off the top AND bottom of the kit scopes. I then shaved the plastic down to fit inside the aluminum tubes to exactly duplicate the shape of the plastic kit scopes and voila, a scope that looks like it's hydraulic metal inside the well, (since the top is painted anyway, that doesn't matter) and it extends and retracts smoothly from the well, just like the real one. The plastic part at the base still works to lock it at the desired height when extended.
I was wondering about the PE fore and aft metal deck pieces and would it be acceptable to glue them onto the wood? I thought with them being so thin that this would be ok, but if anyone has any advice, then please feel free to shout out 
Its maybe a bit late now to chop the ends of the wooden deck anyway.
If I understand your question correctly, I'd use a Dremel tool to shave off a thin bit of the wood so as to inset the PE part. If you have a steady hand and something to brace it against, you could freehand it or you could attach a jig to Dremel as a depth-stop so that you can take off a constant amount of wood.
