My first attempt at magnetizing weapon arms was this. It looked good on paper, but field testing showed that the magnets don't hold as well as I thought they would. The reason is that magnets hold best when touching surface-to-surface. The Soul Grinder does not suffer from this, as it uses 5mm magnets, and they are strong enough to keep the hand in place. The magnetized Chaos Marine, however, did not hold well. Shake or move the miniature (which tends to happen frequently on the table), and both hands easily fall off. That's not to say 1mm magnets aren't strong; however, they are weaker (as you would expect) and they aren't touching - I drilled the holes too deep, and pushed them in as far as they would go.
So today's magnetizing began with reworking the Chaos Marine. I used my hobby knife to dig out the 1mm magnets from the arms:
I expected more trouble here. However, the plastic was pretty easy to dig into, and the magnets came out with a minimal amount of glue attached. They are perfectly fit for reuse!
Then I drilled in 2mm holes, and glued 2mm magnets in place.
I couldn't replace the magnets in the weapons, as the weapons are too thin; however, I think I don't need to. I subjected the model to rigorous testing (that is, I shook it vigorously with both the sword and bolter attached), and the weapons didn't fall off - they didn't even move. Further field testing will show whether this is truly enough. In any case, I decided to further improve the miniature by providing another weapon arm. I used an arm option from the Chaos Spawn kit.
I started by brutally hacking off the shoulder joint:
Then I smoothed it out using the hobby knife, drilled a hole and glued in a magnet. Simple as that!
Here's the new and improved Chaos Marine, with his available loadouts:
Everything went better than expected!
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