Magnetizing your Landraider

Hey everyone, today we're going to talk about magnetizing your Landraider so that you can get all of the variants out of it. This is really my first time magnetizing anything to this extreme, and I spent a bit of time thinking about it, while slicing open my thumb, but I believe I've actually come across the easiest way (at least for me) to magnetize the landraider with out having to do to much extra work other then gluing some magnets in place.


So first thing first, I wanted to be able to swap out the weapon sponsons on my landraider. Now I had been thinking about green stuffing an inset that would fit in the holes and putting a magnet in that, but first molding it so it had some design on it, yadda yadda yadda. And as I was watching my finger bleed I kept going wow that's way to much work, and I've got quite a few models I need to work on today. And that's when it hit me, how my poor Eldar with there magnetized bases keep getting stuck to each other sideways.

That's what I ended up doing here. I placed a single 1/8 x 1/16 magnet at the top of the inner hull. Which I would then use as my anchor point. Knowing that all I have to do is have enough resistance to keep the sponson from sliding out, because it will actually be resting inside the hole.


I then put two magnets at the top of the of the sponson, making sure to test out the polarities before gluing (always sucks having your magnets glued the wrong way). Once again using the 1/8 by 1/16. I found that it would work with one magnet here, but that if you held it upside down it would fall out, but with two magnets you can hold it upside down and do the hokey pokey and everything is fine.


Now here's the tricky thing. With the side hatch doors you would think that you would want the magnets going the same way as you do on the weapon sponsons, and that's what I thought too... until I glued it in place, and tried to put in it there, turns out that because it is much more shallow then the weapon sponsons they actually repel each other.

That is why you must remember to flip the polarity on the door hatches, if you do this they will stay in there amazingly.


And here are the two pieces being held into place by the magics of magnetism. Now if you have the bits (or have bought the bits) to make the other sponsons you can freely change your landraider between all three variants.


So now that you can change the variants, what about those weapon upgrades, well I ended up gluing two 1/4 by 1/16 magnets to the bottom of the top hull pieces of the landraider.


I then did a slight bit of stratch building to get a 1/8 x 1/16 magnet on the bottom of the Storm Bolter and Hunter Killer weapon ungrades.


And again, with those magical magnets you can place both upgrades on the landraider, and pull them off when you do not have them purchased, or with the Hunter Killer Missile, once it is used you can simply pull it off without any problems.


Now lastly, we can't forget about those Frag Launchers that help out our dear poor Terminators who for some reason can't hurl a grenade. (Don't ask me, I'd just build them into the armor personally)


So once again I glued a couple 1/4 x 1/16 magnets to the bottom of both of the pieces, using the larger magnets to get more pull here.

With both pieces magnetized, you can now swap the Frag Launchers on and off for the variants that use them.

Now remember as you're working to double check before you glue that everything continues to fits and is in the right spot.

Another thing you'll want to keep in mind is that you should keep all the polarities the same on items you want to be able to share spots with. It'll do you no good if you can't swap between spots because you have the polarities reversed and they are repelling each other. ;)

-CKR