Tiri Rana's guide to magnetizing … everything!

Tiri Rana's guide to magnetizing … everything!

Part I: The humble Raider

Difficulty: *
Material: 6 magnets

The Raider is the best model to start your magnetizing venue. First it benefits a lot from having magnetized parts and secondly it is actually very easy to magnetize the important parts.

The Turret:

Magnetizing a raiders' turret serves two purposes. First it allows for changing dark lance and disintegrator and second it makes it possible to be removed to represent a weapon destroyed result.

As I said before magnetizing raider parts is mostly simple because the existing holes save a lot of drilling work.
So the first step is to add a magnet to the Raider.


The next step is to drill a hole into the turret and add another magnet here. I use a 2x3mm magnet rod, but it's totally possible to use a 2x1mm disk instead.


The final assembly should line up like this:


Now we have a fully moveable turret, that can be taken of if the need arises. But we're still missing the weapon exchange bit. So we cut off the weapons barrel just between the handle and the barrel.
Again drill, add glue and put in magnets and it should look like this:



Last but not least we'll add:

The Sails:

Again, more of the same, drill, glue, put in magnets.



Those are all steps that are needed to magnetize a Raider, so that it's weapons can be exchanged or removed to represent a weapons destroyed damage result. It's sails can be removed, too to represent an immobilized damage result. Additionally both can be removed to place the Raider on its head to represent a wrecked damage result (this only works, if you leave off or magnetize the crew and hangerons).

If you're not satisfied yet, don't frown. There are some optional additions to make your Raider even more awesome.

Exchangeable Gunner:

Difficulty: *****
Material: 2 magnets
This is one of the most complicated conversions possible with magnets, so feel free to skip this. It's only bonus is that you can either remove the gunner to denote a crew shaken and/or stunned damage result or change it to a wych gunner, so it may not be worth the effort.

The first, the easy part is to add a magnet to the weapons handle, where the gunner is supposed to be glued onto.


It's a little bit fiddly, but not that bad. The hard part comes with adding the counterpart magnet.
First saw, drill, cut or file a hole into the control panel roughly two magnets wide and push a magnet sideways into it.
This should look somewhat like this:


It sounds easy, but believe me when I tell you that it is very hard to get it right and to be true I had to use a combination of all mentioned methods to get the hole in the control panel right. Additionally putting the magnet in is extremely frustrating, because it is hard to reach and tends to fall out, before the glue dries.

Exchangeable Driver:

Difficulty: **
Material: 2 magnets

This one is a lot easier and offers a bigger payoff, since it allows the Raider to be turned over when wrecked.
Just add magnets to the rudder and voila exchangeable driver.



I used a 1.5mm wide magnet for the hull magnet, because the rudder attachment is a little bit small for a 2mm magnet, but I guess it would fit if one's careful.

Exchangeable Prow:

Difficulty: **
Material: 2 magnets

A little bit more complicated than sails or turret, but still pretty easy. It is somewhat redundant, though because the prows will fit and stay attached without magnets just fine.

Just line up the prow, before gluing the raider's hull together. Then drill, glue, rinse and repeat.



So, after finishing all this your raider should look like this:

This is great tutorial. Thank you for putting this together as it's a frequently asked question.