Magnetizing Ork Warbikers

Did a little painting yesterday – got the base reds done on the bikes and started the base coat for the metals, but the majority of my time was spent magnetizing the boyz riders. If you haven’t done the magnets things for your models it can seem intimidating at first, especially the “polarity” thing, but once you get the hang of it (and end up with a stock of mini-magnets) you almost start looking for way to use them.

As I explained in a previous post, I’ll (almost) never run both nobs and regular warbikers in the same list so this makes sense to economise the new models. I do have 18 of the old 2nd ed bikers, should I need to field both types but as I replace the old with the new, I’ll eventually sell off the old ones (to pay for more new ones… it’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it?).

I started by doing a test model first (previous post). Always try this with one model first! This should show you where things might go wrong and help you avoid complications when you sit down to do many of them. In this case, it’ll be a total of 10 legs and 20 torsos. I learned on that first test boy that my original placement of the magnet on the boyz torso was too low and caused the boy to angle too far forward. If I had just gone and done the same with all 10 boyz at once, I would have ruined 10 boyz bodies and not one. Lesson learned for me – yeah!

As far as the process – I placed a pilot hole with an X-acto where I wanted the center of the magnet (inset 1). This was just a bit up from dead center of the “bowl” in the hip area. Then I used a standard home drill bit to drill out the space for the magnet. The drill bit left a hole the exact same size as the magnet (lucky, I guess). My drill bits have a special tip that “predrills/pilot” the whole before the regular bit diameter starts cutting. This leaves a little hole underneath the magnet, this’ll give the glue a little extra bite. (second inset).

Next is gluing the magnet into the hole. Now I wish I had take photos of this process (I might “stage” one later today for examples) as this is usually the most frustrating part, especially if you’re going to use the swappable part, in this case, the torso, on other models. Any one who’s played with more than one magnet before knows that they have this thing called polarity. It’s what makes one end attract and the other repel. Here’s how I don’t mess it up and have pieces flying away from the model I want to use it on.

Set up the “original” model – in this case it’s the first legs part. This is the “master”. All magnets that go into the bodies/torsos will stick to this magnet on this pair of legs. I stick the new magnet on the leg magnet – so there’s two magnets, on inside the legs and one sticking out. Put a black dot on the outside face with a Sharpie or similar marker. This will be the mark telling you what the facing of the magnet should be when you glue it into the torso – black side down. Use this exact same set of legs for every torso. When you are finished, you should be able to use any torso on any pair of legs.

Now, grab one torso, doesn’t matter which, and put the others aside. Stick a magnet to this one just like you did with the legs. Put your black dot on it and glue this magnet black dot down into a new pair of legs. Do this each time using the same torso for each new pair of legs. When you’re finished you should be able to use any torso on any pair of legs.

Now some of you (physicists, electric engineers, experienced hobbyists) might notice. “well, after the first set of torsos are finished and one body is complete, you can use any set of legs to set up the next magnet.” Yes, that’s true since the polarity of all the legs have already be “set”, but when working with so many parts, I found this way very easy to keep track of everything. I’m always afraid of getting to the end of magnetizing and finding that “one” part that doesn’t want to play right.

Sooooo…. Whew! After that log winded explanation (maybe I’ll turn this into a tutorial someday) I’ll show you where I’m at.

The legs are seperate from the torso/arms and any body will fit on any legs. I haven’t gotten around to the nobs yet, maybe later today, but this shows you the finished assembly. Now, there is a price to pay for the flexibility I’ve gained as the handgrips were an absolute nightmare to line up and some of them just don’t. This is becaue of the small amount of irregularity in placing the magnets in the torsos. This causes problems with alignment because the magnet is going to want to line itself up where “it” wants to. Since you can’t really \”re-drill\” or re-align the magnet once the hole has been made, I’m kinda stuck. I can live with that though. I’ll be painting that area up in a way to try an minimize that gap so it won’t be so noticable.

Cheers!