Sunday 5 April 2009

Terminator Weapon Swaps made Easy with Magnets, Part 3

Finally, here's the last part of my first tutorial with magnets.

If you haven't read Parts 1 & 2, you can find them here:

The Shoulder Pad

This is how I attach the should pads with magnets.

First you slice off a bit of the shoulder.

Right arm

You then drill a hole as a guide, as I explained in Part 2.

Right arm

Expand the hole a bit, so that a nail will fit, pretty much like we did in Part 2, except with a slightly smaller nail.

Right arm

The nail I use for this step has a head that's about 2.5mm.

Right arm

"Sink" the nail a bit, by carving away some material around the hole, like in Part 2, but it doesn't have to be as deep. It's ok if it sticks up a little bit. When you're happy, glue the nail in place.

Right arm

Here comes the tricky part, because the shoulder pad is so thin.

Shoulder pad

Carefully drill another guide, about 3mm from the edge. Make sure you don't drill through the pad! You almost only want to make a small pit, not really a hole.

Shoulder pad

Expand the hole, again very carefully, with a 1.5mm drill. You just need enough to sink the magnet a bit.

Shoulder pad

When you're done, just glue a magnet in place. If you're careful not to glue any magnets together, it's handy to use the magnets themselves as a sort of handle to maneuver the magnet in place. After the glue sets, you can easily leave it to dry by sticking them somewhere. In this case, I just attached the stack of magnets to a can of Quick Shade.

Shoulder pad

When the glue has dried, you're done! Now all you need to do is prep some more arms and torsos and you'll have all the flexibility you want!

Magnetic terminators

Magnetic terminators

Magnetic terminators

By being able to remove the shoulder pads seperately, you also get the added bonus of only having to paint each one once. Handy, if you freehand them like I do. :)

Thanks for reading. Keep those comments coming!

See you on 1 may, with an update on my army for Da DeffCup!

Best regards,

Stitch

4 comments:

Space Hulk Enthusiast said...

Great tutorial.
I would have never thought to do the shoulder pads themselves.

Toxin616 said...

i Would like to see this added to the Tutorial section of FtW

Space Hulk Enthusiast said...

No problem, I'll grab the link this time.

If you have any other ones you'd like to include or in the future... all you need to do is send me the link by email and I'll do the rest.

I used to collect them all myslef but with all the members we have now, that's near impossible to do.

Anonymous said...

Another idea, but wouldnt it be cheaper to use a pin or two to hold the shoulder pad in place instead of a magnet? maby one pin on the top and then, depending on the fit, one on the bottom or one on each side of the bottom.