Sword<Pen<Brush - Magnetising Legion Models

Hey guys welcome to an edition of a slightly neglected segment - Sword<Pen<Brush. This time I want to talk about magnetising heavy model kits (For my American audience 'magnetize'. But seriously thanks for reading you guys). I know a lot of people who've magnetised models back when I played warhammer but I never really saw the point. More importantly, though, it seemed really scary. When I moved into Warmachine the idea was even more popular but I decided again I would just buy several kits and it'd be fine. 

When I hit Legion, though, I decided that, because it was a faction that loved multiples it would be way too expensive to buy that many heavy beast kits, never mind the trouble of storing them. So I decided to take the plunge and magnetise the models. I am a total conversion and alteration novice, so I was really nervous about ruining the model and having wasted my money, but thought it would be worth the risk. 

I looked online into available magnets. Rare Earth magnets are the best, apparently, and I found that the right size for attaching plastic limbs to a heavy model was 3mm by 1.5mm disks (Hey Americans, yeah, metric. Ugh right? Stupid Europeans). I looked online and found a few sellers that were offering frankly quite expensive prices. A couple of the guys from my LGS, however, recommended an eBay seller called Spider Magnets who were offering high quality rare earth magnets for a fraction of the prices of their competitors. I got myself 100 neodymium disk magnets for just under £4. 

I started the process normally by taking all of the parts of the kit and cutting off the mould lines and excess plastic. Following that I assembled the seperate aspects of the heavy. In this instance this meant attaching the three parts of the torso together with the legs, as well as assembling each of the arms. Once all the parts were completely dry I started to drill into the 'neck' using a hand drill with a 1.5mm drill bit. It was surprisingly easy to line up to drill in the right place, and because of the small size of the magnets the holes didn't have to be too deep. 

I then moved on the heads, drilling a neat hole in each, roughly where it would meet the neck magnet. Putting the magnet in dry before applying glue is a must to make sure the size is right. Another important trick I learnt was a way to make sure that each of the magnets' polarisations match the corresponding magnet in the body. To achieve this I stuck the magnet into the joint first. Once this had dried I connected the limb's magnet to the joint and then painted a thin black line on the outer facing surface of the limb magnet. This let me know that that face was the one that had to go facing inward in the limb, to make sure the limbs would connect together and then simply glued the magnets into each limb. I was nervous at first, since there was no way to check the magnet connects until the glue dried and made it permenant. But the trick with the black line worked nicely and they all went together just right.

This meant that I now had a whole bunch of interchangable limbs for my three heavy boxes, giving me a huge amount of variability in my beasties for Legion for a third of the cost! I painted each of the limbs and the body, being careful to put a number on the base of the model and a corresponding number on the inside of the joint for each limb/head so I knew which ones went with each other and avoid confusion!

All from the same kit!

For anyone else, like me, who's worried about magnetising or how effective it'll be I can assure you it was super easy and, if I say so myself, I think the results look great too. I've actually decided to magnetise a whole bunch of models, and next on the list will be the Seraph/Neraph kit! I'd strongly recommend anyone who's considered magnetising as an option to give it a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!

As always like Mitsuharu on Minis on Facebook for more updates and photos of my painting work!

-M