I picked up a resin conversion set 1:35 Legend IDF Centurion 1982 Conversion Set (TAM/ACA kits) #1065 at a swap meet. Its the first time I am working on a resin kit and I am surprised at myself that its not as formidable as I had feared. It also helps that I have a garage full of tools including a bench sander to take off resin material on a fairly large parts' flat surface (exhaust mufflers) and to sand down evenly the rear lower edge of the plastic Tamiya Centurion hull to accommodate the sh'ot resin hull extension. Its less risky to remove plastic than to remove resin. It also helps that the bargain resin kit gave me the courage to saw away and file down parts that didn't fit sungly or didn't seem to belong (as in large pour channel structures.) If I really screwed up I am not out by much. To prevent breaking resin parts with complex pour patterns (eg. the gun barrel) I snipped off pour material a decent distance away from the resin part with a sharp electronics surface snip then saw and file down to the finished dimensions. Turned out well.
That confidence led to my first mistake when I clamped a storage box on a vise and sawed away. It cut through like cheese but the cut wavered and cut into the box itself. I promptly epoxied this and I think I'll come up alright as a box is only a rectangular piece and no details will be lost. The epoxy repair is also a good test on whether it would adhere the resin effectively. It did. This is the dollar store expoxy that comes in a double barreled syringe and can dispense an equal proportion of Part A and Part B to be stir-mixed before application. The cure time is quite fast (10 minutes) as the excess glue had hardeded and formed a skin withing that time to make it unuseable. A buck is also cheap enough to buy a fresh batch to work with. I had lots of grief with old epoxy that I felt reluctant to use on account of their old high price and inevitable wastage when mixing a batch for a small glueing job.
Now the real question to this group. The sh'ot has a number of add-on wedge shaped parts around the mantlet on the turret and on the hull. I presume these are space armor. In the model they are solid wedges. On the actual tank I presume they are just armor plate cut and welded into "wedges." Is this the correct intepretation? How thick is the plate? My interest is because I have two of the 1/25 "giant" Tamiya Centurion kits I want to convert to the sh'ot. The 1/35 resin kit finally gave me the visual example to interpret the drawings and pictures I have been collecting to do the conversion. Thanks.