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So 6th edition 40k is here, which has made me itch to sort out my Marines. I've stripped them with Dettol Liquid, back to plastic and in many cases broken them down into pieces. Sadly no before piccys (they werent painted too badly-table ready at the least, I just fancied a change to be honest.)
Here are the results; looking pretty fresh! and smelling like a hospital hehe.



There are a few that might need another rinse in some fresh dettol fluid sure, but not bad going!

Currently the plan is to magnetise.

The actual model count of all those pieces on the tray is:
2 Ravenwing Battleforce boxes
an AoBR box (just the marines - Orks are next in line! one at a time boyz!)
a Dark Angel veterans box
and a Space Marine Command Squad Box
Theres also a black templars upgrade frame in there somewhere too. (I really liked those chained on weapons xD )

Witht he new starter set rumoured to include 5 deathwing termies, 3 ravenwing bikers and tactical squad with 2 characters toboot! needless to say im a little excited for it!

Magnets wise im looking at 3mmx1.5mm Neodymium disc magnets with two possible strengths to order; N40 and N52, anyone used this sort of size and strength for marines? particularly arms, maybe backpacks/jump packs, dreadnought arms or terminators, landspeeder options etc.
Will they be strong enough? do I really need larger ones? or could I double them up if needed? Or conversely are they too large? or too strong?
Opinions/input welcome

I planned to just drill suitable sized holes and superglue magnets in place, or build fixtures with sprue/greenstuff if needed on some models.
Also plan to purchase a Devastator box, Terminators assault and regular, Dreadnought etc to obtain the pieces I want to have changable over time. Just bit by bit, I'l magnetise what I've got and get it painted up to some extend first!


Colour scheme for my army im looking at Dark Angels 2nd founders, perhaps angels of redemption.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Angels_of_Redemption#.T-k-xLXY-vM

I've just been doing a bit of the sorting out and final scrubbing of all those bits in the pic. During which time I got to thinking baout what I'm doing next.

Will be ordering the magnets tomorrow, and I'm going to need a new pin vice if I go with the 3mm ones. Only having a citadel one handy which just doesnt seem to fit my 3mm drill bit by a hairs width :S

So my question grows;
I can do a 2mm drill bit, are 2mm magnets enough?
If I'm really gonna need 3mm ones, where can I get a decent pin vice that will hold a 3mm tool?

Pin vices are sooo old hat!

Real hobbyists roll with a Tamiya Hobby Drill. Ideal for all situations but excels when you have an armies worth of drilling. Takes HSS bits from 1mm to 3mm.

I always suggest the biggest magnet you can reasonably fit in a model the last thing you want is your weapons sagging. 4mm are good but dearer and too big for a standard collet on a pin vice hobby drill.

3mm works in most circumstances.

Oh and the Tamyia drill is a kit as well as a tool. I got mine sent from Thailand for some reason for about £20. It took an hour to make but it was quite enjoyable.

I was under the impression that a powered drill would be a bit overkill... I do have a rotary tool that undoubtedly has a 3mm collet in the box somewhere.
I could drill with that I suppose if I am careful; I'm not sure if its speed range is suitable for drilling tiny pieces of plastic or not

HairySticks wrote:I was under the impression that a powered drill would be a bit overkill... I do have a rotary tool that undoubtedly has a 3mm collet in the box somewhere.
I could drill with that I suppose if I am careful; I'm not sure if its speed range is suitable for drilling tiny pieces of plastic or not

The tamiya hobby drill has real low RPMs, so won't melt plastics and is easy to control. It's also very small compared to a power drill.

The tamiya hobby drill is amazing, but think you have to import one to the uk.

Well worth it tho, also takes dremel collets to increase the range of bit sizes you can use.

did you prime your models?

also, could you tell me what the full name of the dettol is called?

/dave

Those models were primed with Winsor and Newton Gesso (white) thinned down with some liquitex airbrush medium, and some water, and tinted grey with some black acrylic ink.
Then sprayed through and airbrush. and painted up with GW paints and some artist acrylics.

The dettol took it all off just fine, some i have put back in for a 2nd round, not a big deal- I still dont have the magnets so no rush!

If you look at the picture, you can see the label on the bottle.

But its the original antiseptic dettol liquid. its browny orange and stinks like hospital cleansers. I got mine from Asda for £3.00 for a 750ml bottle. I used 2 bottles, but suppose I could've been more economical.

One more thing I have decided is a good idea. Is to wash each piece in a bath of degreaser; the stuff that they use to wipe down a car just before they spray the paint. Its took off any last residue from the dettol, and took the smell down considerably. Not really essential, another rinse with water would do this and the smell is a non issue when some paint goes on.
No comments about long soaks in the degreaser though, all I did was throw 4 or 5 pieces into a little pot of it, wash each ones a little with an old brush and then dry it off on some paper towel .

Hey, i use a dremel type of hobby drill, it is fast and if your not careful it can start to melt the plastic, but it drills so fast you only need use it for a few seconds, it certainly speeds things up when when using magnets.

do you think it can take off a GW primer chaos black? ^^

I use a Dremel/Rotary tool for all my magnetizing work. You'll be fine with it, just practice the first few times on spare stuff, maybe an arm or a backpack that you don't care about.

Great stuff! Well I will try my hand at drilling a couple of spare arms out (We've all got a million spare marine arms Im sure!)
If I do okay at not destroying those with the rotary tool then I've got a winner. If not I can order a hand tool or that tamiya drill.

For the actual magnets I'm looking at getting a few hundred 3mm x 1.5mm ones and doing as much I can with them.

They sound suitable for all infantry shoulders
For the dreadnought I might have to use larger, or maybe i can use 2 stacked up to increase their pull strength?


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This is what Im Thinking for colours, with black deathwing and ravenwing, maybe have one shoulder pad have the split white/green for those too.


apparantly i made the green/white mirrored there so would be the opposite way around for angels of redemption

Today i tryed my first magnetising ever!
I started out with the two attack bikes, making the side car detachable. Am just waiting for the greenstuff and superglue to strengthen up before i rip the magnet out of its place by pulling them apart!
I used 3mm x 1.5mm N40 grade magents and they seem plenty strong enough for this. maybe would need 2 for the metal attack bikes Im not sure.

The hole depth is a bit of a close call and I did actually go through, so have resurfaced behind with greenstuff. il tidy it up when the magnets setting is cured a bit.

Hehe, i like the idea of magnetising the side car. Remember not to glue a base to it!

i might look at magnetising the wheels to allow it be base-able when a single bike.
Is there a round base big enough for an attack bike with the side car to sit on? they are just slightly too big for dreadnought bases; I think they look silly on them!

I've got some 2mm by 1mm magnets to try and make the weapon mount interchangable on these too.

Other than these parts, the riders will likely have their arms swapable so i can put pistols and swords or plasmas and meltas on them as and when I need to

The landspeeders will hopefully have all 3 weapon positions magnetised, it didnt seems too tricky when I planned it hehe.

The only base reasonable for them is the one at the same size as a dreadnought base. It's a bit small for an Attack Bike, but it is all you can get

Have been working on the Landspeeders just now, got the front mounted assault cannons and heavy flamers done

However I only have 1 heavy flamer between 3 Landspeeders, I'm gonna need to source some more from somewhere...someones bitsbox or a bits store perhaps. (the reason here is that the speeders in a Ravenwing Battleforce are the mk1 speeder kit with assault cannons found on ravenwing sprues, while my 3rd speeder was a seperate box originally intended to be sammael's speeder)
Also made the twin assault cannon so one can be Sammaels Speeder if I choose; am tempted to magnetise some decorations on just one speeder for that possibility.

Next up is the side doors / typhoon missile pods, which might be a bit tricky as they are already built hehe. So im at here thinkin about how is best to mount the magnets to the speeder itself and get them aligned up at a nice depth etc etc.

Will post piccys of them once iv got all three gun mounts magnetised

The bikes I've left to one side for the gs to go off properly.

Today I are mostly been..... Magnetising a Landspeeder!
Got some piccys of my first magnetised Landspeeder, still need to do the passenger seat gun and complete the construction though.



Little messy but its early days for this magnetising malarky and me.


I had to make these little brackets out of sprue to stick the magnets onto for the typhoon missile / blank side hatches.



With Typhoon missile pods


With nose mounted assault cannon;


With nose mounted heavy flamer;


Will be completing the construction and magnetising the heavy bolter / multi melta gunner and cleaning up the figure in general before painting, but I have 2 more speeders to magnetise first!
Only one heavy flamer piece between the three though so I'm on the hunt for a couple more of that bit to allow me full selection! Not having my dex to hand, are we still allowed the nose mounted multi melta's? they were a configuration on the really old models for the speeders.

Yeah, nose mounted MMs are allowed, although, i dont see the need if you can get one up by the passanger. Unless you want to be really mean and go with 2 MMs

Nice work on the magnetising! I'm still very much in the learn by ALOT of mistakes stage of magnetising.

Keep it up

Zambro wrote:Yeah, nose mounted MMs are allowed, although, i dont see the need if you can get one up by the passanger. Unless you want to be really mean and go with 2 MMs

Nice work on the magnetising! I'm still very much in the learn by ALOT of mistakes stage of magnetising.

Keep it up

With the new fast skimmer rules you can move 12 and still fire 2 weapons at full BS. The MM/MM speeder is a lot more viable then it used to be, either for insuring a kill on a single target, or vaporizing 2 units in a squadron.

I just got my first batch of real magnets about a month ago, having a lot of fun retrofitting my army with them. One trick I picked up is for small/thin things is to use nail heads. As an example, the weapons on dreadnoughts (stormbolters/heavy flamers) don't really have space for a full magnet (at least the ones I use). So I cut the head off a small finishing nail and filed it down so I just had a little disk. The weapons are light enough that you don't need to pull of two magnets to keep them attached, so just the one I sunk into the dread's arm is needed.

The main problem i have is drilling too far / not enough. I went right through a Juggernaugh body first time. And all the other times, i was getting too cautios and glued them in place when they were still sticking out.
They dont look to bad tbh

So far Im doing okay with the drilling, using a rotary tool, like a dremil multi... but some other brand
Its a tad faster than I would like though. I'm concerned that il go through some things too fast.

Only having done a handful so far, what I'm doing seems to work alright;

Drill the hole and check the depth can encompass the whole magnet. To do this i just hold the 'stick' of all the magnets stuck together and put one end into my drilled hole seeing if the whole thing fits inside.

Then a blob of super glue, followed by a small blob of greenstuff (enough to half fill the hole)
Then another blob of glue and push the magnet into the greeenstuff (with a tool not your fingers - glue can seep out and stick you to it!)
Then adjust the magnet into position and smooth the greenstuff around it and leave to go off.
Been finding it easy enough to use the magnetic pull of the magnet and the blade of my craft knife to pull it back out a little bit when I sink it in too far.

Yeah, same method here. Just i dont use GS. Is there any benifit to using GS? I more or less always get a snug fit, so i dont need to fill a hole

Zambro wrote:Yeah, same method here. Just i dont use GS. Is there any benifit to using GS? I more or less always get a snug fit, so i dont need to fill a hole

Not to sound sarcastic, but if you are good enough to not need it, more power to you. I'm not. Between unsteady hands, improvised tools, and just plain screwing up, I need a bit of GS just to cover my mistakes. If you drill a little to far into your mini, superglue alone will not fix that, but a little ball of green stuff dropped into the hole will make it all better. I use a dremel, not drill, and don't have a base or drill press or anything; just drilling by hand. I get a bit of a wobble. So even though I use the same size drill bit as my magnets, I still roll up a little snake of GS to cover the gap. Speaking of drill bits, mine have a point on them, so the bottom of the hole is not flat. GS insures a good contact surface.

The green stuff is mostly to ensure a snug and flush fit as far as I can tell.
I think I'l keep on using it as my drilling is'nt quite what I would call precision! My holes often seem a little too wide which i can only attribute to my own poor drilling method, Iv got the drill held in a vice and hold the job in my hands or some pliers if its too small for my fingers to hold. The putty definatly helps me out but a decent blob of gel glue would probably do something similar.

I find the gs is easily repositionable for ample time for me to mess around with how the magnet sits and can be gouged out easily if I feel I messed it up.

Ok, fair enough. I shall put a little GS into the hole next time i magnetise something, just to see how it works out

Hi, I have the same problem, I too want to change my colour scheme for a change. Did you leave the models in neat dettol, if so how long did you leave them in for?

Also I use a magnet or two, I became a bit obsessed with the little things, magnetising everything, I had to scale it back as it was just not practical, I just magnetise the weapons now.
Some of the bigger weapons and dred arms would need a bigger magnet to hold the weight. Also on larger models I just glue the magnets on the surface as it saves trying to hide a larger magnet(8mm or so), then paint over the magnet.

It was indeed pure unadulterated Dettol liquid.
24 hours soak made 95% of the paint come right off, and some pieces got left another 24 hours.
You will however need to rinse them in fresh dettol fluid and then again in more fresh dettol fluid etc untill all the paint residue is gone otherwise it clumps up and goes all sticky when the water is introduced... if this happens let it dry off and scrub it in the dettol again untill things look better

Definatly wear some gloves too, i had a sword or something poke a hole in mine and that finger was a bit dryed out after a little while in contact with pure dettol, my skin peeled because of it too and it was only a little bit through the hole in my glove. so I would avoid soaking your mits in the stuff for too long (or atall) - I think this is becasue it is concentrated, as an antiseptic im sure you would dilute it down somewhat before use.


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Have just done a bit of shopping and ordered a load of fresh paint and some figures to go with these

Colours are going to be purple power armour, Yellow pad trim and weapon cases, Bone white robes and cloths. (I've changed my mind so many times since i was thinking about the white/green mentioned earlier in the thread hehe but I've ordered the colours now so its been decided!)

Bikes black but riders purple still, and terminators I'm undecided on right now; bone white like the deathwing or purple like the rest of the army.

Its very close to the hawk lords scheme only I dont think I will be using any metallic gold. Chapter symbols and badges Im not sure about yet, I've got a fair selection of Dark Angel and Black Templar pads so I might use some of those.

New figures will include a Devastators box, Scouts with sniper rifles and a Drop pod My reasoning being that scouts and a drop pod will give me a slight variation in painting experience to just lots of marines on foot and bikes.

Thanks for the great step by step, im gonna try the dettol trick, did you loose any detail from the process?

What did you do about the bases, all of my models are glued on to textured bases, i see these as a problem.

How would you get them off and how to strip the base as it is glued using pva?

Well at first I took everyone off their base, they were just glued on-top of some sand/slate texture that was painted before glueing, and so came away easily.
Since then I thought what the heck and threw them in the soup too.

All of my pva glued on bits of slate and sand came off into the drink and I deem them lost now because I'm simply not going to scrub individual grains of slate
The resin details from the gw 40k resin basing kit all stripped down fine and detached from the bases (they were just stuck on with pva.
My bases are now looking like new ones again, waiting for me to come up with a new texture method to try out ( am looking into making some base molds for use with green stuff or something simple like that actually)
No warping or softening of the plastics atall, and no loss of detail whatsoever on any figures. The onyl downside to the whole dettol process is the smell and what happens when your hands absorb a lot of it.

The smell will remain on your mini's afterwards, I have removed it by washing each part in 'panel degreaser' which is what they wipe a car down with before it gets sprayed. Probably not essential but I guess there was infact a small residue of dettol left behind, I cant say if this will affect paint adhesion or not because I removed it anyway. A good scrub with soap water a few times will probably get a similar cleanliness tbh.