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So I will prime my tanks when I am off. Is it safe to get paint on the magnets? I have my Russes with a sprue inside the main turret to keep the magnets close to each other. Would I need to spray inside the tank or should I just spray outside of it?

It wouldn't really matter. It doesn't reduce the attraction to any noticeable degree. If anything, painted magnet looks better as you don't have the shiny silver thing showing. It DOES however lose that crisp clicking noise when you put them together.

Hi there, just to clarify, you were wondering if the magnet would affect the paint job, correct?

If so, then painting over the magnet should be fine, and would hold up, depending on how much the magnet will move, and rub against the other magnet. The more movement= more wear and tear on the paint, but as long as the magnet is hardly visible, there is little to worry about.

My warlord titan weapons stay in juuuuust fine spray paint or not. Even couple extra layers from airbrush stage won't matter. Ditto for knights. Doubt you will have any trouble.

Getting paint on the magnet is not a problem, it will adhere just as well.
However, as mentioned before, if two painted magnets are in direct contact with eachother, the paint will be rubbed off over time. This happens even quicker when the magnets form a rotating joint together, like for example on the tank turret.

I would spray the turret and the tank hull separately. Give the turret a good spray from the top and bottom. When painting, you only need to pay more attention to the top of the turret.

I don't know how you would spray the inside of the turret, and generally I don't think it is necessary.

Well generally I have magnets where they won't be visible with the weapon in anyway so at least I'm not worried about paint stripping off. Of course OP could have different plan where it might matter.

Paint will make the attraction weaker, but not by much. You’ll only really notice if they were borderline before anyway.

One plus is the paint will increase friction, so for joints that have a tendency to rotate undesirably it’ll actually help.

The paint won’t affect the magnetic fields, unless the paint has some metal in it then it might reduce it by only by a tiny tiny fraction.

Magnets don’t stop working just because they are covered in something, so go ahead and prime the model.

The only problem you’ll have is trying to find the magnet afterwards

 Supershandy wrote:
The only problem you’ll have is trying to find the magnet afterwards

Actually there's slight annoyance beside that. At least I find while painting my titans that brush has annoying habit of suddenly flying to the magnet! Need to be careful how you paint around the magnet with brush! That thing is attracted to the magnet as well.

 Supershandy wrote:
The paint won’t affect the magnetic fields, unless the paint has some metal in it then it might reduce it by only by a tiny tiny fraction.

Magnets don’t stop working just because they are covered in something, so go ahead and prime the model.

The only problem you’ll have is trying to find the magnet afterwards

Paint won’t affect the magnetic field of a magnet, no, but even a small separation causes magnetic attraction between two objects to drop off rapidly. A paint film is quite thin so the separation isn’t much, but it’s a thing and if you happen to have magnets that are borderline as far as being strong enough to hold on the ones that aren’t painted will tend to hold better (unless they’re failing by pivoting in which case the added friction is a plus).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Supershandy wrote:
The paint won’t affect the magnetic fields, unless the paint has some metal in it then it might reduce it by only by a tiny tiny fraction.

Magnets don’t stop working just because they are covered in something, so go ahead and prime the model.

The only problem you’ll have is trying to find the magnet afterwards

Paint won’t affect the magnetic field of a magnet, no, but even a small separation causes magnetic attraction between two objects to drop off rapidly. A paint film is quite thin so the separation isn’t much, but it’s a thing and if you happen to have magnets that are borderline as far as being strong enough to hold on the ones that aren’t painted will tend to hold better (unless they’re failing by pivoting in which case the added friction is a plus).

Oh I understand that the paint film will leave a gap, but usually neodymium magnets are strong enough to cope with two-three thin layers of paint easily enough, even a layer of primer shouldn’t affect it that much.

I thought neodymium was pretty much the given go to for magnets, the ones for the letters on the fridge are barely strong enough to hold the letters up

That depends also on size of magnets and how heavy pieces they have to support. Sometimes due to nature of model you can't fit in all that big magnet so have to settle for weaker one. My blood angel 30k assault marines have bit flimsy magnets because those wrists wouldn't take bigger magnet!

tneva82 wrote:
That depends also on size of magnets and how heavy pieces they have to support. Sometimes due to nature of model you can't fit in all that big magnet so have to settle for weaker one. My blood angel 30k assault marines have bit flimsy magnets because those wrists wouldn't take bigger magnet!

It's not just size. Magnets have power ratings and the higher the rating the stronger the magnet. A higher N number is very desirable for models as it means a stronger and more reliable bond esp when moving models around.

How high you would rank 45/48 then?

tneva82 wrote:
How high you would rank 45/48 then?

I've not bought any in ages but I think 35 is as strong as I've generally found - so yeah if you're at the 40s chances are you do need bigger magnets! OF course with some large parts (esp any that might rotate or things like dragon wings) it helps to have a thicker pinning rod in the join area as well, to add some further support (of course you only glue one end of the rod into a part)