Strung the bastard up and sprayed it - I got Condor's monkies to lace it up to the hub - there was a little bit of microscopic chipping around a few of the eyelets.
I did consider masking the eyelets, but couldn't come up with any clever way of doing them - so I didn't bother.
could you have blu tacked the eyelet and then run a scalpel round the bottom? my brainless effort.